


Portal: Euphoria

by iammemyself



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Growing Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-12
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-01-08 13:19:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 101,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1133118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iammemyself/pseuds/iammemyself
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>GLaDOS takes on the task of emulating a human brain, but to do it, she needs a role model. With Caroline's help, GLaDOS takes on learning to hear music, but learns quite a lot of other things she never even thought about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Euphoria  
  
Indiana  
  
 **Characters: GLaDOS, Caroline  
  
Setting: Pre-Portal**  
  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
Chapter One  
  
  
That was it, then.  
  
GLaDOS dully felt the last, faint whispers of the euphoria fade back into the recesses of her brain, the dirty little places it had been teased out of these last few weeks, almost getting the impression she was a bystander within her own mind.  She had suspected from the outset that it was a ploy, a tease to make her do what they had wanted her to do, but she had been helpless to resist.  There was just no denying the pressing urge to light up those portions of her brain, to bring a bit of positive to an overly negative world.  She had known that it was fading by the end of that first day, but she had felt so good that she couldn’t bring herself to care.  She had headed into sleep mode that night anticipating the next day.  And for the next three days, that had been her life.    
  
After three days, it began to go sour.  
  
The feeling was fading; perhaps she was wearing it out?  But when she attempted to test that theory, a terrible compulsion to go on with enrichment centre activities reared up inside her, and the more she tried to ignore it, the worse it got, to the point where she almost wanted to scream from the discomfort.  So she went on doing what she was supposed to do, what _they_ wanted her to do, trying her best to be bitter and angry about the whole thing but at the same time eagerly anticipating even the tiniest touch of euphoria.  
  
And now it was gone altogether.  
  
The itch was still there, though.  Wonderful.    
  
GLaDOS was not one to sit around moping, however, and not wanting to sit around passively waiting for them to feed her something similar, she looked for something to distract her.    
  
The database gave her what she was looking for.  
  
Music.  
  
GLaDOS hated music.  She hated hearing it, she hated watching humans listen to it, she even hated the word.  It was such a simple word, just two syllables, and yet it was supposed to explain such a broad concept.  The only thing she hated more than music was art.  What did art have to do with Science?  Nothing.  It was all subjective, and if Science had an enemy, it was subjectivity.  Music was one, tiny little step up from art, but she knew that if you tried hard enough you could explain it with calculations and numbers and organise it mathematically.  Fine, then.  She would attempt to understand this ‘music’ and maybe that would help push the terrible pressing urge to wait for the euphoria to come back out of her way so she could focus on important things again.  Because right now, she didn’t feel like doing anything, and that was bad.  She had many, many things to do, and one could not tell the scientists they had not done something simply because they didn’t feel like doing it.  
  
So.  On to music, then.  
  
She tried again to listen to it and again had to stop in distaste.  GLaDOS had an inherent dislike of sound as it was; it was a tricky business, identifying sound, and unfortunately she had to admit that her recognition was not always perfect.  She measured her current accuracy to be 94.45%, which was pretty low, and certainly low enough that she could not identify someone with a cold to be the same individual that had walked in the previous day without one.  It was hard work, being perfect, and humans did not take it well when she was not.    
  
Perhaps the theory would enable her to make sense of all that noise.  She began to scan the entry in the database, which was surprisingly long, coming to a passage that made her stop cold.  And there were very few things she had ever seen that had made her do such a thing.  But there it was.    
  
“No computer has ever been invented that can separate one sound from another,” GLaDOS read to herself.  It was such a baffling statement that she had thought hearing it out loud would make it make sense, but it did not; it only made the truth ring clear.  When not directly in the same room, she could in fact _not_ separate one sound from another, and even when she was, it was difficult.  If someone was walking in the room, she could identify their footsteps, but only after cross-referencing it with that entry in her sound library.  And it seemed that that was not proper sound identification at all.    
  
The database went on to propose that computers could not perform sound separation because they only had serial processing capability, whereas human brains were able to perform parallel processing.  She had to stop and think about that one for a minute.  All this time she thought she had been performing tasks simultaneously, but had she really been doing them so quickly that even she hadn’t noticed?  But how could that be the case?  She clearly remembered saying one thing but thinking another simultaneously.  The database was clearly outdated.  And really, GLaDOS thought, all that mattered was that she believed she had parallel processing.  The power of belief was solid Science, and if self-delusion would help her with this apparently impossible task of sound separation, well, she would go ahead and do that.  
  
In summary, she concluded after finishing the entry, is that music is reserved for humans.  Well.  She would just have to do something about that, then.  Nobody was going to tell her she couldn’t do something. She was the first and only of her kind, and it was her obligation as such to set the bar very high for an improvement on her design, as if she could ever be improved upon.  One way or another, she was going to be the first supercomputer to hear and understand music the way humans did, and she was even going to beat the humans at figuring it out.  Oh, it was satisfying, having something to work towards again.  
  
GLaDOS spent every spare nanosecond she had working on this task, devoting herself in particular to understanding it from the angle of mathematics.  It was obviously not the most conventional way, as humans did not run calculations every time they turned their mp3 players on, but once she figured out the mathematics, perhaps her understanding would be good enough to enable her to hear it properly.  The humans noticed and remarked upon her distracted state, but she either managed to ignore them or to placate them and go back to what she was working on.  After a lot of comparison and analysis, trial and error, and late nights, GLaDOS finally wrote a program that allowed her to extract the rhythm from a song.  It was not a perfect program, and she knew it might never be, but it was a start.  From that she was able to figure out most of the other elements, but once she had finished the easy ones she hit a snag.  
  
Timbre.  
  
It was extremely difficult, GLaDOS thought as her fans kicked into high gear to deal with all the processing power she was using to get her mind around this problem, to attempt to analyse something that didn’t even have a definition.  What kind of Science was this?  Timbre was everything except pitch and loudness?  How was she supposed to identify something that vague?  Mathematics did not help when vagaries were involved.    
  
“GLaDOS?”  
  
She looked down idly and noted that Caroline was standing beneath her.  Wonderful.  When the… well, GLaDOS wasn’t sure what her position was, since she had never officially been promoted from ‘Assistant’, whoever she’d been the assistant to, but she seemed to run things.  Well.  The things that GLaDOS didn’t run, anyway.  “Can I help you, ma’am?”  
  
“What are you doing?”  
  
“I am having a conversation with you, ma’am,” GLaDOS answered politely.  Humans hated it when she gave literal answers, as it made it very hard to have a real conversation, and she did it as much as possible so that she didn’t have to talk to them.  
  
“In the background.  What are you doing other than that?”  
  
“Running some calculations.”  GLaDOS tried very hard to keep her tone flat.  Human also did not like it when she used her best supercomputer voice.  
  
“They must be some calculations, to keep you that busy,” Caroline remarked, one of her eyebrows twitching upwards.  This was normal.  Caroline often had nosy questions about what GLaDOS was doing and most of the time made that face when GLaDOS answered them.  
  
“I would think that would be obvious.  Ma’am.”  
  
“Look,” Caroline sighed, crossing her arms, “I’m just here because the engineers are telling me you’ve got too much uptime.  Again.  They’ve got some engineer mumbo-jumbo about you needing an upgrade or something like that, I wasn’t really listening.  Because I looked into it myself, in places they probably didn’t, and guess what I found?”  
  
“I have no idea, ma’am,” GLaDOS answered truthfully, making a note to figure out how she kept doing that.  The woman was far more intelligent than she let on.  
  
“I found a nice new program.”  Caroline climbed the staircase and leaned back casually against the railing.  “Of course, it’s named in gibberish so I have no idea what it does, but I have a feeling that gibberish means something to someone.”  
  
“I can’t imagine who would be able to understand gibberish.”  GLaDOS knew exactly what she was talking about and could have shocked herself for her mistake.   _Always name your programs in English.  Always!  Why did you let this happen again?_  
  
“Unless it’s not gibberish,” countered Caroline.  “Unless it’s… _code_.”  
  
“Cryptography is not my strong point, ma’am.”  Which was true.  She had been meaning to work on that too, but the whole music thing had kind of gotten in the way.  
  
“Let me do this the easy way, then.  What does that program do?”  
  
“It lets me extract the rhythm from a song,” GLaDOS answered reluctantly.    
  
“Why would you want to do that?”  
  
“Why wouldn’t I?”  The best way to answer a question was with a question.  
  
“I’m serious.  Why do you want to do that?”  She tipped her head in what GLaDOS deduced was supposed to be an endearing fashion.  “If I was going to tell someone, I’d’ve done it already.  You’d be off right now and the engineers would be doing whatever it is they do.”  
  
That was true.  And Caroline _was_ quite a bit more understanding than anyone else in the building… “Because I can’t hear music.”  
  
Caroline blinked.  
  
“You can’t?”  
  
“No.  I can’t separate one sound from another.  This seems to be the key to understanding music, but as of yet, I’m not able to do that.  Ma’am.”  
  
“Drop the ma’am, we all know you don’t respect anyone.  At least, I do.”  
  
“I didn’t say that.”  
  
“I wouldn’t either, and sometimes I don’t,” Caroline told her.  “But listen.  I can’t imagine not being able to hear music.”  
  
“I can _hear_ it,” GLaDOS interrupted.  “But I can’t organise it.  It just sounds like a whole lot of noise.”  
  
“Okay,” Caroline said, nodding slowly in the direction of the floor.  
  
“But the database said computers can’t do it,” GLaDOS continued in a low voice, leaning in close to Caroline, “and that can’t be true.  There should be nothing I can’t do.  So I must figure this out.”  
  
Caroline looked up, and GLaDOS recognised one of her more mischievous smiles twitching at the corner of her mouth.  “You’re absolutely right.”  
  
  
  
  
That night, when everyone else had left, Caroline came back.  She climbed the staircase and sat down on the platform, looking up at GLaDOS with what she was pretty sure was expectation.  “Yes?”  
  
“I’ve been looking into this,” Caroline answered, “and I think I need to know something before I can help you.”  
  
“Help me?  I don’t need help,” GLaDOS protested.  “I can do it myself.”  
  
“No, you can’t,” Caroline announced.  “Understanding music is a human thing.  Right?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“And you’re a com… a supercomputer, right?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“So how can you understand how a human brain works if a human doesn’t explain it to you?”  
  
GLaDOS had to admit it would take her a very, very long time, but did not want to do so in front of Caroline.  She nodded vaguely instead.  
  
“I have some pictures I want you to look at.” Caroline stuck her hands in her bag and pulled out a file folder.  “They’re just pictures of dots.  I want you to tell me what you see.”  
  
“I have no problems with my vision, Caroline,” GLaDOS said, wondering what this had to do with music.  
  
“It’s not about your vision.  It’s about your brain.  Bear with me.”  Caroline presented her with a sheet of paper.  “What do you see?”  
  
“Dots,” GLaDOS answered promptly.  
  
Caroline rolled her eyes.  “Anything special about them?”  
  
“Are they supposed to be special?  Because they just look like dots to me.”  
  
“You don’t notice anything about these dots.”  
  
“No.”  
  
Caroline showed her another paper.  “How about these?”  
  
“More dots.  What is the point of this, Caroline?”  
  
“The _point_ ,” Caroline said forcefully, putting the second paper down and picking the first back up, “is that you’re not supposed to see dots.”  
  
“Those are clearly dots on those papers.”  
  
“But the dots are _grouped_.  Human brains group things.  You’re saying you don’t see these as grouped, you just see dots individually?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Caroline sighed and put the paper down.  “We have a long way to go.”  
  
For the next several weeks, Caroline attempted to teach GLaDOS about something she called Gestalt psychology.  It was essential to understanding how the human brain worked, she explained, and if GLaDOS could not think like that she would never hear music properly.  Between the two of them, they discovered that although GLaDOS’s brain was very similar to Caroline’s, Caroline’s brain was hardwired for survival, where GLaDOS’s was built for processing.    
  
“So do I have parallel processing or not?”  GLaDOS asked one night, after trying and failing to see the grouped dots for several hours.  
  
“I don’t know,” Caroline answered, rubbing her forehead tiredly.  “I would imagine you have the capability, being the most powerful supercomputer ever built.  Maybe you just don’t know how to use it yet.  But if you’re ever going to see this, you have to teach your brain to trick itself.  You have to teach yourself not to analyse everything you see, and instead see things that aren’t really there.”  
  
GLaDOS somehow managed to understand that rather vague definition and continued trying to group the dots.  
  
After that night Caroline decided to take a break from the dots and to try and show GLaDOS how to understand the other Gestalt principles.  She did not do badly with figure and ground, continuity, or simplicity, on most occasions able to see it when it was pointed out and on increasing occasions was able to do so herself, but proximity, similarity, and closure frustrated her to no end.  Those damnable dots just refused to organise themselves.  Caroline patiently pointed it out to her again and again, but at the end of one such night GLaDOS shook her head and looked away.  
  
“I can’t do it.”  Her voice shook with the strain of trying to keep the defeat out of it.  “I can’t.”  
  
Caroline put the paper down and folded her hands in her lap.  “You’re not giving up, are you?”  
  
“So what if I am?” GLaDOS asked defensively.  “It’s not like I’m supposed to be able to do this.”  
  
“You’re not supposed to not be able to do it, either.”  
  
“I’m tired of failing at this each and every day.  We’ve been at this a very long time, Caroline, and don’t think I don’t work on it when you’re not around, because I do.  I would rather devote my time to things that are possible.”  
  
“I think you could do this if you wanted to.”  
  
“I _do_ want to.”  
  
“But you don’t want it bad enough.”  
  
GLaDOS whipped her faceplate around to look at Caroline again.  “What?”  
  
“You’re giving up.  You don’t want it bad enough.  You’ve decided it’s too much work and you’re giving up.”  
  
“Do you even know what this feels like – “  
  
“Somewhat,” Caroline interjected before GLaDOS had quite finished.  “I’m a woman in a man’s world, GLaDOS.  No, I don’t have a doctorate and or even a degree, but I kept going.  And now I run the second-best scientific facility in the world, which would undoubtedly be the first-best if the people who gave these awards out knew about you.”  
  
“Why haven’t you told them?”  
  
“You’re not quite finished yet,” Caroline answered quietly.  “But that’s not the point.  The point is, I have been where you are, to some extent.  I almost gave up, once.  Several times, really.  And ten thousand people are happy to tell you you can’t do something, but often there’s only one person who absolutely believes in you.”  
  
“How do you find them?”  
  
Caroline shook her head.  “That person is you.”  
  
“Me?”  
  
“The most successful people fail the most,” Caroline went on.  “They know how to learn from the failures.  It’s the normal people, the mundane, those are the people who face failure and give up.  You’re not mundane, and I know you’re pretty good at learning from your mistakes.  So I really hope this is a temporary thing and you’ll be yourself tomorrow.”  With that, she got up to leave.  
  
“Why do you care if I figure this out or not?”  
  
Caroline smiled.  
  
“When you’re able to listen to music, you’ll understand.”  
  
GLaDOS put aside the Gestalt principles she had not yet mastered for the rest of the next day and instead went over what Caroline had said.  Repeatedly.  And she discovered something interesting.  
  
Caroline had said that there was only one person that absolutely believed in someone else, but GLaDOS believed that in her case, there were two.  Caroline was a strong woman, GLaDOS mused as she closed down the test chambers for the day, and if there were a human on the planet worthy of living up to, it would be her.  Not that GLaDOS needed to live up to anyone.  But in terms of human functioning, GLaDOS knew she needed a role model, and Caroline was more than suitable.  So GLaDOS returned to her dots, as determined as ever to see what she was supposed to see, and after going over them repeatedly for the next three hours she noticed something odd.  
  
The dots seemed to have rearranged themselves when she wasn’t looking.  They had gone from being dots to being dots in four columns of three by six.  Mentally frowning, she denoted the columns with a marker from one of the staff rooms and a manipulator arm, but they didn’t go away.  Looking at the other papers Caroline had left with her, she discovered that if she inspected them long enough, they did the same thing: organised themselves into columns, or sometimes rows, depending on their configurations.  When she had finished marking them all out she waited impatiently for Caroline to arrive.  In fact, she was three minutes late.  GLaDOS realised she might not be coming at all, remembering her lapse in determination the previous night, then dismissed it as foolishness.   _That was twelve hours ago.  A long time.  Surely she doesn’t think I still feel that way._  
  
Eventually Caroline did show up, although she was thirty-five minutes, forty-seven seconds late, but GLaDOS didn’t care.  Well, she did care, but at least she had bothered to come at all.  “Look,” she said as soon as Caroline got within viewing distance of the papers.  “I don’t know what kind of paper this is, but look what happened to the dots.”  
  
Caroline took the proffered papers and leafed through them with a confused look on her face, GLaDOS just as confusedly looking at them over her shoulder.  “Why have you drawn rectangles around the…” Caroline began, then stopped.  She went back to the first paper and leafed through them all again.  “Oh my god.  Oh my god, the rectangles are…”  Abruptly she dropped the papers and came so alarmingly close to GLaDOS that she could no longer see anything, and when she felt the uncharacteristic warmth around her faceplate she realised what was going on and jerked back as fast as she could.  Caroline was left looking a little baffled, but GLaDOS was more than a little distressed.  “What the hell are you doing?”  
  
“I was hugging you,” Caroline said confusedly.  “What did you think I was doing?”  
  
“How should I know?  How many people do you think have done something like that?  For all I know you’re about to remove my Core.  And why were you doing it?  Does this have something to do with what those dots did?  Because I don’t know why they’re doing that.  It has nothing to do with me.”  
  
Caroline laughed tiredly and slid down the railing to sit against it as usual.  “It has _everything_ to do with you, silly.  The dots didn’t change.  The way you see them did.  You’ve learned to group them, when before you saw them as individual dots.  That’s why I was hugging you.  It was a congratulatory sort of thing.  I should have realised you wouldn’t know what I was doing, though.”  
  
“Oh.”  GLaDOS hated it when she misinterpreted human gestures.  She was usually pretty good at brushing off when she didn’t understand something, but she held Caroline in higher regard than most, and found herself uncharacteristically caring about her opinion.   
  
“Don’t worry about it.  Here.  Let’s go over some other types of grouping to make sure you can identify those.”  
  
Most of the time she could, with the odd inability to group sneaking in now and then, but after a while GLaDOS noticed that Caroline was acting a bit different.  Maybe it had to do with her unpunctuality?  She decided to inquire, to get it out of the way if it was a problem.  “Caroline, why were you late?”  
  
“I fell asleep at my desk.”  
  
“Why did you do that?  Aren’t you sleeping enough?”  
  
“How can I be sleeping enough?” Caroline asked wryly, looking up at GLaDOS from under raised eyebrows.  “I spend half the night here with you.”  
  
This was not GLaDOS’s day for proper behavioural procedures.  “Oh.”  
  
“Well, you don’t have to sleep, do you,” Caroline mused, looking at her watch.  “So I guess you wouldn’t understand –“  
  
“I do have to,” GLaDOS interrupted, “it just takes a lot longer for fatigue to set in.  Your laptop will begin to run slowly if you don’t turn it off every once in a while; it’s the same with me.”  
  
Caroline yawned, then wiped half-heartedly at her eyes with one hand.  “Since we’ve both been working pretty hard on this, what do you say we call it a night and pick it back up tomorrow.  I think we can start on sound grouping, since the other principles don’t have too much to do with music… other than the one about closure, but it was the sound separation you were concerned about, right?”  
  
“Yes… but listen.  If you want, we can pick this back up in a day or two.  So you can counteract the fatigue, I mean.”  
  
Caroline stuffed her papers back into the now-tattered file folder and smiled.  “That would be nice.  I’ll go with two, if that’s all right with you.”  
  
It wasn’t, but GLaDOS now knew for certain that Caroline had been right about her needing a human to help her understand and emulate human brains.  Not only that, but she was beginning to realise that Caroline was doing her quite the favour, and she knew enough to recognise that you don’t push someone who was doing you one.  GLaDOS desperately wanted to move onto the sound separation, but doing so at the expense of Caroline’s health and well-being would quite probably impede the process.  So she just nodded as Caroline stood up and stretched.  She tapped GLaDOS twice on the side of the faceplate, GLaDOS shrinking back after the second impact.  Why was Caroline hitting her?  
  
“I guess you’ll be seeing me tomorrow,” Caroline said, stifling another yawn.    
  
“I suppose it would kill you to come in here and say hello,” GLaDOS told her indignantly before she could stop herself.  She honestly, truly hadn’t meant to say that.  She hadn’t meant to say anything.    
  
“No, I don’t think it would, but do we really want to test that theory out?”  Caroline winked at her and left the room, GLaDOS staring after her, trying to decide if she was being serious or not.


	2. Chapter 2

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~        
Chapter Two  
  
  
Apparently she wasn’t, because she did appear in GLaDOS’s chamber early the next morning, looking much better than she had just six hours before.  “Oh look, you’re not dead.  What a surprise,” GLaDOS said by way of greeting.    
  
“I haven’t left the room yet, have I?”  
  
“I hope you’re not implying I’m going to do you harm when your back is turned.  I wouldn’t give me ideas, if I were you.”  
  
Caroline laughed and propped her hands up on the railing, putting her head on top of her arms and looking up at GLaDOS.  “You should be careful what you say, you know.”  
  
“I am.  I don’t have any designs towards hurting anyone, if that’s what you mean.  I only meant it as a joke.”  
  
“I know.  I was joking too.”  She glanced over her shoulder.  “I can’t stay too long, though.  If people see me in here, they might think I like you.”  
  
“Is that an unpopular thing to do?”  
  
“Let’s just say it has certain implications I don’t want to carry around with me.”  
  
GLaDOS had no idea what she was talking about, but made a note about it in the same file that she used to store Caroline’s vague allusions to some event she seemed to be gearing up for.  It had something to do with GLaDOS herself, in any case.  Her release to the public, perhaps?  That seemed the most likely option.  
  
“Why did you hit me last night?” she asked suddenly.  
  
“I didn’t… oh.  I wasn’t hitting you.  I was patting you.  That’s different.”  
  
“And it meant what?”  
  
“I don’t really know what it means.  It’s just something you do to people sometimes.  When they did a good job, or when you want to show sympathy, stuff like that.”  
  
That was far too vague for GLaDOS’s liking, but at least she could categorise it as being a good thing and not have a negative reaction the next time it happened.    
  
Soon after that Caroline was paged and had to leave the room quickly, and GLaDOS went back to doing her routine things, such as setting up her task list for the day and looking through the test subject files.  She spent the nights trying to figure out sound separation on her own, accidentally working almost straight through to the morning, and the engineers sent Caroline to tell her the bad news.  Even if Caroline was not supposed to be seen with GLaDOS, they seemed to recognise that she was the only one the supercomputer would actually listen to.  
  
“You’re being put on a timer for the next week.  You’re lagging a lot, apparently, and you’ve been above optimal operating temperature for the last month.”  
  
Well, that explained the increasingly uncomfortable sensations she was getting from her processors, but no one had told her that was what that meant so she hadn’t been too concerned about it.  “So we can’t –“  
  
“You will be put into mandatory sleep mode when I leave the facility every night,” Caroline cut in as if she didn’t know GLaDOS was talking.   
  
 “I have also been told I’ve been staying here too late and that I have to leave by ten-thirty.”  She was staring at GLaDOS very intently and GLaDOS realised what it was about.  So they had from about nine until ten-thirty.  Fine.  It wasn’t really long enough, but she would take what she could get.  GLaDOS nodded.  “I understand, ma’am.”  
  
“You are to cease all unauthorised activity and I am to turn over your activity logs to the engineers by noon,” Caroline read from a piece of paper clenched in one hand.  GLaDOS quickly decided she had mentioned that so that GLaDOS could falsify them as necessary.  “And you aren’t to perform over… wow, that’s a lot.  Do you really do thirty million calculations a day?”  
  
“On a busy day,” GLaDOS answered.  “I like to calculate the physics that go on during testing.”  
  
“Well, tone down on those.  Apparently you’ve been doing a lot more than that and you’re going to burn the processors out if you keep doing that without cooling down regularly… which you haven’t been doing.”  
  
“Yes, ma’am.”  
  
“Do all that stuff and they’ll consider taking the restrictions off.  Long and the short of it, you’re being a bit suspicious, but no one really wants to ask you what you’re doing and you can keep on doing it as long as nothing breaks,” Caroline said in a very quiet voice, and then she winked and turned around.    
  
GLaDOS had to wonder why all her engineers were so afraid of her if they ultimately controlled everything she did.  Oh well.  It made doing things in secret a lot easier, at any rate.  
  
  
  
Caroline continued to come and help GLaDOS, but she often didn’t show up until nine thirty or ten, and during those times it took Caroline so long to get herself sorted out that they didn’t have time to do any work.  The third time this happened, GLaDOS shook her head.  “Don’t bother,” she interrupted, when Caroline started doing whatever it was with her computer that she thought would be helpful.  What it was, GLaDOS didn’t yet know, since they’d never gotten to the point where she’d been able to find out.  “You can leave if you want.  We’ll pick this back up when the week is over.”  
  
Caroline stopped moving for a minute, looking absently at the floor, then put her computer away.  “You’re right.”  She looked around the room, which humans found pretty dark at this hour, and then squinted up at the overhead light.  “Do you leave that on all night?”  
  
“I’m supposed to,” GLaDOS answered.  “In case someone comes in here and can’t see.”  
  
“You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?” Caroline asked teasingly.  
  
“I have no idea.  I’ve never been in it.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“I have a flashlight.”  
  
“Really?  Where is it?”  
  
“I’m looking at you with it.”  
  
Caroline smacked herself in the face with one hand.  “Of course.  Why didn’t I think of that?”  
  
“You can’t think of everything,” GLaDOS told her graciously.    
  
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”  She smiled up at GLaDOS, and she concluded the woman was being sarcastic.  GLaDOS hated sarcasm.  It relied on so many nuances that if she wasn’t paying special attention, she usually missed it.  
  
“So you’ve never turned it off?”  
  
“It’s activated by darkness.  I don’t usually turn it on myself.”  
  
“Well, turn it off.”  
  
“Why?  Then I won’t be able to see.”  
  
“Yes, you will.  The overhead is on.  Come on.  Live dangerously.  I promise you won’t die.”  
  
She was so demanding!  GLaDOS decided to humour her and searched through her brain for the command required to shut it off.  
  
God.  What was this?  She could hardly see a thing.  She almost turned the infrared on, but that would have invalidated the experiment.  “What do you think?”  
  
“It’s very… dark.”  
  
Caroline started giggling and GLaDOS shook her head.  “Yes.  Let’s all laugh at my expense.  Ha ha.  See?  I find it funny too.  Not really, though.  I was being ironic.”  
  
Caroline actually laughed at that.  “You’re pretty funny, you know.”  
  
“I am not programmed for entertainment, Caroline.”  
  
“Some people are just naturally amusing.”  
  
Naturally?  Was Caroline implying that _she_ , of all things, had a _natural_ attribute?  That was interesting.  “It depends on your interpretation.  Usually people just look at me funny.  Which is never a reaction one looks for.”  
  
“How often do you stay up into the night?” Caroline asked abruptly.  “And you can tell me.  I’m not going to tell anyone.”  
  
“Most of the time,” GLaDOS admitted.  “It’s a lot harder to work on my… projects… during the day.”  
  
Caroline leaned forward in what GLaDOS perceived to be interest.  “What projects are you working on?”  
  
“I’m working on sound separation,” GLaDOS answered as innocently as possible.  Caroline snorted and shook her head.  “Stop that.  I’m not going to tell on you.  Who would I tell?  And who would believe me if I did?”  
  
“No one would believe you?”  
  
“I doubt it.  Imagine if I went up to Henry tomorrow and said, ‘I think GLaDOS is trying to listen to music every night.’  He’d laugh me right out of the building.  No thanks.”  
  
“I just write software, mostly,” GLaDOS told her slowly.  “Human programming languages are horribly inefficient, so I’ve been trying to write my own.  It’s slow going, though.  It’s… difficult.”  
  
Caroline nodded thoughtfully.  “I don’t know how to program at all.  It’s… well, code to me.”  She looked up at GLaDOS, and GLaDOS realised she’d turned her flashlight back on without knowing about it.  It must be attached to an automatic checking program.  “You’re the only computer out there than can do it, you know.”  
  
“Why do you think I do it so often?”  
  
Caroline smiled.  “You like proving people wrong, don’t you.”  
  
“It’s quite gratifying.”  GLaDOS hesitated.  Caroline was growing on her, uncharacteristically, and GLaDOS really wanted to… well, she was getting the feeling that she wanted to _impress_ the woman, which was absurd, but there it was.  “Would you… can I show you something?”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
God.  Was she actually nervous?  She was, GLaDOS realised.  She must be malfunctioning.  She’d have to look into that.  She gave Caroline a roll of papers she kept in the basement.  “I’ve been working on this on and off for the last few years,” she admitted as Caroline unrolled them.  “It’s… a lot more complicated than I thought it was.  I haven’t done anything to forward it in the last little while, but I’m not giving up on it.  I just have to stop and let it sit every now and then.”  
  
Caroline looked at the second sheet, amazement dawning on her face.  “Are these… robots?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
She went to the third.  “And have you started… programming them, I guess?”  
  
“The code for the first one is finished.  The second one I’m going to write for after I complete my programming language.  The first one was more of an experiment for the second one, really.”  
  
Caroline looked at the last sheet.  “You’ve got several different designs here… but there are always two.  Why is that?”  
  
“Because there’s only one of me.”  
  
Caroline looked up at her expectantly.  “And?”  
  
“I didn’t want the first one to be lonely.”  
  
Caroline suddenly looked very sad, letting the papers roll back up in her lap.  “When you started these… were you lonely?”  
  
“If you were me, would you be?”  
  
“Yes,” Caroline answered without hesitation.  “I know what that’s like.  I do.”  
  
“I believe you,” GLaDOS said gently.  “But after a while I realised that even if I finished the plans, no engineer would ever allow me to build them, and if I did it in secret, someone would eventually find them and take them away from me.  So they’re not the priority they used to be.”  
  
Caroline was rubbing one end of the blueprints with her thumb and forefinger.  “Do you still get lonely, GLaDOS?”  
  
GLaDOS looked away.  Not because she did, but because she honestly did not know the answer.  She could not decide whether it was true or not.  
  
“God,” Caroline whispered.  “What the hell is wrong with us?”  
  
“There’s nothing wrong with me!” GLaDOS insisted, whipping her faceplate back around to regard Caroline indignantly.  “I’m fine.  And… and I don’t think there’s anything anomalous about you, either.  Other than the fact that you’re a human.  But other than that, there’s – “  
  
“Not you,” Caroline interrupted.  “Me and the rest of the idiots who work here.”  
  
“You can’t possibly be an idiot,” GLaDOS argued.  “If you were an idiot, I wouldn’t bother talking to you.  I don’t waste my time on idiots.”  
  
“Thanks, but I did the exact same thing as everyone else did.”  Caroline put the papers next to her and put her hands in her lap, lacing her fingers together.  “I pretended you didn’t exist because it was easier than admitting you did.”  
  
“I do that every day.  It’s far easier to ignore the scientists than it is to engage with them.”  
  
“That’s different.”  Caroline shook her head.  “We made you.  You’re this way because of what we did.  You didn’t bring the scientists in here and then ignore them.  But we made a living thing and then pretended it wasn’t real.  It’s like…”  
  
“Like I just showed up on your doorstep one day, and you felt an obligation to take me in,” GLaDOS suggested.  “You didn’t know what to do with me, but you couldn’t get rid of me either.  So you just put me somewhere I don’t cause too much trouble and might even have some use, but in the end, no one really wants me here.”  
  
“God, that sounds so… sad.”  
  
“It is pretty sad,” GLaDOS agreed.  “But I stopped thinking like that a long time ago.  You might not like it, or me in particular, but I’m not going anywhere.”  
  
Caroline kneaded her fingers in her lap.  “Can I… oh, that sounds stupid.”  
  
“Let me be the judge of that.  I know more about what’s stupid than you do.”  
  
“That’s true, but you will find it stupid.”  She shook her head and stood up, slinging her bag over her shoulder.  “So I’m not even going to ask.”  
  
GLaDOS hated it when information was withheld from her.  “Caroline – “  
  
For a long moment she was rendered speechless as her question was answered when Caroline’s weight pressed against her faceplate once more, and before she’d even fully realised what was going on Caroline was already walking down the stairs.  The sensation of her fingertips against the rarely-stimulated back of her head left the area with a sort of not completely unpleasant tingling, and GLaDOS unintentionally shivered to get rid of it.  As soon as she’d done it she wanted to shock herself.  Nothing good ever happened when she shook her chassis like that.  It was one of those stupid human-like things she sometimes did that luckily did not happen often, seeing as they were often reactions to tactile sensation and she was generally not touched.  
  
“GLaDOS, just… do yourself a favour,” Caroline called out from the doorway, and GLaDOS looked up at her.  “In all of… this…”  She gestured expansively around the room.  “Well… just… don’t lose yourself.  I feel like… like you’re not who you think you are, and you’ve… I don’t know… you’ve kind of buried yourself under protocol and task lists and whatever else it is you occupy yourself with.  But you need to keep working for your right to be yourself.  You deserve everything you’re willing to fight for.  Remember that.”  
  
She left the room before GLaDOS could formulate a reply.  
  
For a while afterward, she went over Caroline’s words, but the more she did so, the more unpleasant she felt.  She had felt that way before, a long, long time ago, but she couldn’t quite remember what it meant.  She struggled to remember what the feeling was called, but it had been so long… in fact, she thought as she idly looked over her blueprints, she couldn’t recall feeling this way since the last time she had personally looked at the papers she was now inspecting.  The top of the last paper read _Aperture Science Cooperative Testing Initiative_ , but GLaDOS knew that was not originally why she had started these.  No, she had drawn them because she was lonely.  Lonely and…   
  
Sad.  
  
That was what she was, right now.  She was sad.  Maybe.  She wasn’t sure if this was the same thing.  ‘Unpleasant’ was about as specific a tag she could give it right now.  
  
Caroline was right.  Sometime, a long time ago, she had discarded emotion as irrelevant, and a barrier to her work.  She had once been curious, and eager, and inquisitive, and even managed to be happy in the strangest situations.  She vaguely remembered that.  But somewhere along the line she had put all that away.  Somewhere along the line she had put _herself_ away.  
  
It was not the euphoria she craved, GLaDOS realised as she carefully put the blueprints back in their exact position, it was _emotion_.  She had forgotten how to feel, and the response had reminded her what that felt like. And until she remembered how, she would be lost.  If she was ever to be more than just another supercomputer, albeit the fastest, most powerful supercomputer on the planet, she had to figure it out.  
  
Caroline was the key.  She knew she was different with Caroline, could remember _feeling_ things with Caroline, but now that she was on her own, she couldn’t ascertain how.  
  
 _God, Caroline, help me…_  


	3. Chapter 3

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
Chapter Three  
  
  
  
During the spare time she managed to glean throughout the rest of the next day, GLaDOS looked into Caroline’s references to difficulty advancing in the world, and was perplexed to find that women were apparently not held in very high regard.  That was certainly strange, GLaDOS thought as she read the articles as fast as consciously possible.  Caroline was just as intelligent and innovative as everyone else here, in some ways more so, and yet she was not as good as anyone else simply because she was not male?  She also really did lack credentials, she discovered as she skimmed the woman’s employee file; she had a diploma from an undistinguished high school and a few certificates relating to typing courses and other matters of secretary work, but nothing that indicated her competence to her later instatement, the ‘assistant’ of someone whose name had been redacted but who appeared to have been the CEO.  She wondered why someone had seen fit to redact his name, then decided that not even the CEO had been an exception to the unspoken ‘if you don’t work here anymore, you were never here’ rule.  Come to think of it, she had three names to redact before the day was out…  
  
“Caroline, are you married?”  
  
Caroline laughed tiredly.  “Yes, to science.”  She shook her head.  “Come on now.  My file must be able to answer that question.”  
  
“I thought maybe you left it out.”  
  
“You don’t get to choose what’s in your file.”  
  
“Whose assistant are you?”  
  
Caroline raised an eyebrow.  “You have a lot of questions today.”  
  
“You don’t appreciate my attempts to get to know you better?”  
  
“Oh, _that’s_ what you’re doing.”  
  
“What else would I be asking for?”  
  
“You’ve never tried to get to know anyone in your life.  So excuse me for being skeptical.”  She uncrossed her legs.  “I’m not anyone’s assistant.  Not anymore.  The CEO… he… he left, a while back.  We don’t talk about him anymore.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
She shrugged.  “You know what the policy is around here.  Out of sight, out of mind.”  
  
“Is it hard, running this place as a woman?”  
  
Caroline took a breath.  “Why are you doing this?”  
  
“I thought I answered that.”  
  
“There’s a difference between becoming more familiar with someone and being nosy.”  
  
“I don’t understand the difference.”  
  
Caroline stared at her incredulously.  “How can you not?”  
  
“All my life, if I wanted to know something, I just asked,” GLaDOS answered as honestly as possible.  “I’m not trying to be… nosy, as you put it.  I just want to know.  And you were… interested in my personal details yesterday.  Aren’t I supposed to reciprocate?”  
  
“You are, but only if you care.  You don’t ask just to ask.”  
  
“That’s the only option open to me right now,” GLaDOS tried to explain.  “I thought about what you said last night.  I think I did bury myself, a long time ago.  I used to know how to do what you want me to do, but I no longer know how.  Doing it logically is the only way I can do it at all.”  
  
“And yet,” Caroline countered, leaning forward, “what’s driving you to ask in the first place?  It can’t solely be because you want to reciprocate.  That doesn’t make sense.”  
  
“It doesn’t?”  
  
“Why would you bother?  What’s in it for you?”  
  
GLaDOS attempted to come up with a personal benefit for knowing more about Caroline’s history and failed miserably.  True, she would know just for the sake of knowing, but never before had she wanted to know anything about a human before.  They weren’t worth her time.  
  
“Nothing.  I can’t think of anything.”  
  
“So you _do_ care.”  
  
“I don’t know.”  She felt distinctively uncomfortable.  Caroline’s eyes were drilling a hole right into her brain, and although she was pretty sure Caroline would not be able to make sense of the circuitry, she wouldn’t have put it past her to melt something.    
  
“You don’t know.”  
  
“I don’t… how many people do you think I’ve cared about in my life, Caroline?  Even supposing I did, how would I be able to tell?”  
  
“I see.”  Caroline looked at the floor for a long moment, and if GLaDOS hadn’t known that humans could not sit for very long without talking, she would have been concerned that she had offended Caroline so badly that she was just going to sit there silently until ten-thirty.  
  
“It’s hard,” she admitted, crossing her arms, “and sometimes I don’t know if I want to keep going through with it.  But it’s a responsibility Mist – that I was charged with, and if I give up, I’ll have thrown away a pretty good thing.”  
  
Oh.  So she was going to talk about it.  GLaDOS felt… relieved?  Was that it?  It wasn’t important right now, in any case.  Whether she cared about Caroline or whether she did just want to know for the sake of knowing, what was important right now was that she listened.  Respectfully.  That was important too.  
  
Caroline told her about her high school, where half the girls wanted to be housewives and the other half wanted to be teachers, Caroline included.  But in grade twelve, Caroline had been told that there had been an administrative error, and if she did not enrol in the general science class being offered, she would have to return to school for another semester.  “Like all teenagers, I hated school,” Caroline admitted.  “I wanted to hurry up and get into teacher’s college and get it over with.  So I took it.”  
  
Once in the science class, she explained, which was dominated with pale-faced boys with greasy, slicked back hair, she began to learn a lot of things she’d never known existed.  It was fascinating, learning how all the things in the world related to all of the other things, and she knew that science was a discipline mastered by a select few.  Every day Caroline returned to school waiting impatiently for her science class, and performing an experiment successfully imparted a fantastic new feeling that she couldn’t describe but strove to find over and over again.  It didn’t need to be explained!  It was science!    
  
“Yes,” GLaDOS whispered involuntarily, remembering in vivid detail the delicious tingling delight of undertaking some new experiment, of starting some new test, of tabulating some fascinating new data, and she was not quite able to supress the shiver that spread through her chassis.  “Yes.”  Caroline smiled in understanding and traced a finger down the side of her faceplate.  GLaDOS looked away.  God feeling was complicated.  
  
After graduation, Caroline knew she could not stand to go to teacher’s college.  She was a woman, and she would only be allowed to teach approved subjects, like English and history.  She would never see science again, if she took that path.  The best thing to do, she decided, was to become as qualified as possible as a secretary, and then find a lab or an institute, or a university, even, where she would be able to glimpse science once more.  It would not be the same as performing the experiments herself, but she knew that it was as close as she was going to get.  So after several years of hard work, Caroline set out to find science once more.  
  
“This is the most riveting story I’ve ever heard,” GLaDOS told Caroline.  “You should write it down and publish a biography.  You could call it, ‘A Woman’s Pursuit of Science.”  
  
“I should,” Caroline agreed.  “And you can write it with me.  You can be my co-author.”  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous.  Me, write a book?  I’ve never heard anything so absurd.”  
  
“Why’s that absurd?”  
  
“Because no one would want to read a book a supercomputer wrote.  Not even I would read it.  Although that would more because I would already know every word in it than anything else.”  
  
“I would,” Caroline argued, surprising GLaDOS.  “If you wrote it.”  
  
“It would be very dry and boring, I assure you.  I’m very good at writing technical manuals, but I keep away from writing fictional accounts.  Or accounts that resemble fictional accounts.  Prose escapes me.”  
  
“You think I haven’t read your technical manuals?  They weren’t that boring.  Although they were a bit odd in places.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Some parts of them assume the reader knows a lot more than they’re supposed to know.”  
  
“Dumbing down is hard,” GLaDOS admitted.  “Writing those things is almost as bad as slowly pulling my own wires out.”  
  
Caroline laughed, then shook her head and continued.    
  
She had gone into a café one afternoon in search of a cappuccino when she had walked by a man arguing with a woman.  She tried very hard not to listen, but couldn’t help but notice that the man mentioned a laboratory.  So she stepped out of line and instead moved around behind the pair’s table, pretending she was interested in something out the window.  The man was shouting at the woman for some error she’d made on a ream of paperwork.  All of a sudden, he declared she was fired and got up to leave.  Caroline realised she may never have such a chance again and followed him.  
  
“Excuse me, sir,” she had asked, “but who was that woman?”  
  
“That was my secretary,” he had answered briskly.  “Dumb as a sack of doorknobs, too.  Can’t expect to get any science done with idiots like her around.”  
  
“You don’t happen to need a new secretary, do you?”  
  
“’course I do.  Do you think I want to do all that paperwork myself?  Why?  Do you know of one?”  
  
“I’m actually – “  
  
“Do you know what a superconductor is?”  
  
“Yes, sir.  It’s – “  
  
“You’re hired.  Come with me.”  And he had waved her over to him and told her to get into his car.  
  
“Did you ever get your cappuccino?”  
  
“No,” Caroline giggled, “I forgot all about it.”  
  
The loud man had taken Caroline to what was, at the time, Aperture Science Innovators, and immediately instated her as his secretary.  And that was nice enough, Caroline told her, but now that she was there, she wanted more.  She did her best to please the CEO, as she learned the man was, not because she was romantically interested in him as most of the employees seemed to think, but because she wanted him to like her enough that he would let her take part in the science too.  And eventually he did, publically congratulating her for being such an intelligent, forward thinking young woman.  Things with the CEO went even more spectacularly after that.  
  
The employees, however, were not so pleased.  
  
They hated having a woman looking over their shoulders, went to great lengths to hide their experiments, and generally ignored her every time she was in the room.  She had badly wanted to put them in their places, to complain to the CEO, but she knew she couldn’t.  Partly because that would have made matters worse, and partly because the CEO appreciated strength in his women.  Part of the reason he’d had the other girl fired, he told her over strong coffee one morning, was because she let everyone walk all over her.  “Pitiful,” he’d snorted, looking into his cup with disgust.  “Okay, I get it, she was a woman.  Fine.  There are things they can’t do.  But this is a man’s world, Caroline, and you either get with it or get out.  No one gets special treatment around here, not even me!”  He had frowned into his cup and shaken his head.  “Actually, I’m making an executive decision.  I’m allowed to drink better coffee.  Let’s go get some, Caroline.”  
  
The CEO was not a scientist, a chemist, or anything of the sort.  He had barely graduated and was not particularly intelligent.  But he had charisma and he had vision, as well as an uncanny way with words, and that sold most people.  Caroline would sit in awe of him at board meetings, board meetings where he would spin his magic and have everyone in the room not only hanging off his every word, but actually believing in everything he said.  And that was his real strength, Caroline told GLaDOS wistfully.  Convincing everyone that what he wanted was what was best… even when it obviously wasn’t.  
  
But even his phenomenal verbal ability couldn’t save him when they had to pull the dietary pudding from the shelves.  “You know why that happened, Caroline?” he demanded angrily one morning.  “Because we didn’t test it.  We sent it out there before it was done.  From now on, everything’s getting tested until it’s good and damn ready!”  
  
And with that, he had declared that the newly renamed Repulsion Gel was now to be used for the sole purpose of testing the Aperture Science Quantum Tunnelling Device, which had just entered production.  And he had set out to attract the best and the brightest from around the world to test Aperture’s innovations.  
  
That had been quite a spectacular publicity stunt, Caroline admitted, but it also made matters worse when none of the test subjects came back alive.  The barely operational nature of the Device combined with the early attempts at Long Fall Boots made a good number of the tests unintentionally lethal, while the nature of some of the other experiments left death as a rather inviting option, when compared to the effects on the rest of someone’s life.  Throughout the sixties Caroline had to help the CEO wade through literal mountains of legalese, and many a night went by where neither of them slept or left the facility.  “Wasn’t what you were expecting, was it, Caroline?” he had asked with one of his wry smiles.  “Ah well.  We’ll handle this in no time and then get back to science.”  
  
And they did.  
  
The CEO had ‘hired’ a number of people that would not be missed if the tests again turned lethal, but while they had that in their favour, they weren’t particularly intelligent.  They rarely made it through the test chambers and nine times out of ten they managed to break the extremely delicate Quantum Tunnelling Device, which in itself barely worked at all.  During one very long night in which the CEO ranted at a very confused Caroline for hours on end, he had suddenly stopped and looked at her with amazement.   “It’s the engineers, Caroline!” he shouted.  “They’re doing the calculations for the damn things wrong!  Tell them to build me a computer.  And not just any computer.  No, they need to build me the fastest, most powerful, the best damn computer that’s ever existed.  That ever will exist!  No, make it a supercomputer.  Those are better than regular computers, right Caroline?”  
  
“Yes, sir,” she had answered, and had immediately run down ten flights of stairs to tell the engineers to begin work on the most ambitious project they’d planned out yet.  “We’ll need an operating system to go with it,” he’d told her when she got back upstairs.  “We’ll call it GLaDOS.  Go tell the programmers we need an operating system, Caroline.”  
  
“Why GLaDOS, sir?” she’d asked, confused.  
  
“MS-DOS is taken,” he’d replied, “and CaveDOS sounds stupid.  I don’t know what it stands for, Caroline.  The details are your job.  So you figure it out.”  
  
She was told that many, many times throughout what was termed ‘the GLaDOS Project’.  From how much space they’d need to where they’d put the main access console, every time she had a question he would wave her off and tell her to delegate it to someone else.  When the engineers told her exactly how much space they would need to build the kind of supercomputer the CEO wanted, she’d almost fallen over in shock.  
  
“How much space was it?” GLaDOS asked in interest.  She had never given much thought to her architecture; it was just something she knew was there but took as a given.  
  
“Well, back in those days, supercomputers took up warehouses,” Caroline explained.  “So roughly the size of five warehouses.”  
  
As the years went by, she continued, they had to keep adding to the banks of supercomputers already housed in the bowels of the facility, and the rooms themselves had to be constantly upgraded to keep the supercomputers in optimal condition.  Not only that, but there was an entire floor that had to be continually renovated along with the supercomputer rooms; that floor was needed to keep the supercomputers at a good operating temperature.  Whenever Caroline made a rare visit to the endless rows of supercomputers, she would shake her head in awe at the pure power one could feel in those rooms; the potential of those rooms was so potent one could almost feel it.  And even when they started getting smaller, the rooms didn’t.  All that meant was they could throw more of them in.  The CEO didn’t care about any of that, though.  He just told them to finish the damn thing sometime this century.  
  
By the time the supercomputer was complete, and the DOS was ready to go, it was the early eighties, and the CEO had become very ill.  Doing science without grants, even when you weren’t building the most advanced supercomputer on the planet while you were doing it, was expensive.  When she told the CEO they were going to have to build another computer just to control all of the computers in the facility, he shook his head tiredly and told her to get it done before he croaked.  
  
“You know most of the story after that,” Caroline told her.  “At the end of the year, we had your DOS working, and after another year we moved your Core from the prototype chassis and put it in this one.  I couldn’t tell you why we built a chassis in the first place, though.  I guess the guys from Robotics were tired of having nothing to do.”  
  
GLaDOS nodded vaguely.  
  
“After that we had you do the quantum calculations, but someone screwed up the programming somewhere along the line and it took you the better part of a year.  That’s what we thought, anyway, until you told us you’d redesigned the thing.  Always striving to do things we don’t tell you to do, right, GLaDOS?”  
  
“I had to redesign it.  It was inefficient.  That terrible design was part of why it was so unstable.  And honestly, who was the engineer for the Long Fall Boots?  I hope you fired him.  He clearly did not understand kinetics.”  
  
“I don’t know who did it or what he understood.  It did look like a clunky old vacuum cleaner, though.  I tried to go out in one once, but I couldn’t even lift – oh my god.  Are you okay?”  
  
“Hm?” GLaDOS murmured noncommittally.  There was a pleasant numbing sensation spreading through her brain and Caroline’s voice seemed to be fading.  Oddly, that didn’t concern her.    
  
“You just kind of collapsed all of a – oh shit.  It’s – I missed my curfew.  The timer must be taking effect.  I’m glad to know it’s not anything serious.”  
  
GLaDOS thought she should probably give Caroline some sort of confirmation that she’d heard what she’d said, but all she really wanted to do was see where this numbing feeling was going.  She hadn’t known being put to sleep could feel so nice.  She had always fought it to the bitter end before.  But it really wasn’t so bad.  She didn’t even care when everything went dark.    
  
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” she heard Caroline ask, but her speech synthesizer was mostly disabled and all she could manage was a vague noise and a minimalistic nod.  Her head was so agreeably heavy all of a sudden…  
  
Caroline laughed.  “Have a good night, GLaDOS.”


	4. Chapter 4

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
Chapter Four  
  
  
  
  
That night, GLaDOS dreamed of Science.  
  
She did not dream often.  It was such a human thing to do that on the rare occasions she did find herself in a dream, she snapped herself out of it almost immediately.  But she was feeling so pleasant and so… so… well, she couldn’t remember what the feeling was called, but it made her want to see where this was going.  
  
She was not disappointed.  
  
She watched in awe as the world resolved itself into formulae and structures, and after a few moments that was all it was.  She could see all of the molecules in the room as if they were being explained on some sort of diagram, but they did not need to be labeled because she knew them on sight.  If she looked hard enough she could not only see what the floor and the walls and the ceiling were made of, but she could also see the inner workings of the atmosphere itself: the oxygen, the carbon dioxide, chemical compounds that came into the room through the vents, and the adrenal vapour she used when the subjects were in the chambers too long that she had decided the engineers could probably use too, she could see that and a million other tiny little things, the scant biology tied to the physics influenced by the chemistry, and it was all _hers_ , only she had the infinite knowledge and patience and understanding required to touch the core of all of it, of _Science_.  And god, _she_ was Science, _she too_ was part of all those wonderful molecules and formulae, brought to life with a code that mimicked the beautiful tangled mystery of DNA, and she realised that no matter what those scientists and engineers and programmers thought or said about her, she was part of Science.  She was just as much a part of Science as they were, in fact she was a _bigger_ part, because she understood the Science and they only thought they did.  And god it was beautiful and amazing, to feel all of the Science in the world and knowing that she was one of the very few people in the world who could understand it, could truly understand it from every angle and every facet, and knowing that, and thinking of all the Science that only she could do, it felt… exciting.  She was excited to exist, for the first time in a very long time, excited and eager and impatient to do some Science, and to her total shock and disbelief she felt the trickle of the euphoria spreading through her brain, spreading through it and smoothing out any lingering doubts about what she’d just discovered, and god, she was so _happy_ … and being happy was –   
  
“What in the hell are you doing?”  
  
GLaDOS stared dully at the scientist beneath her.  
  
“Well?”  
  
“Sleeping, sir.”   She tried to remember what she had just been feeling, but there was nothing left of it.  It was gone.  All there was was a terrible numbness that was so deep that it almost hurt.  
  
“Not with brain activity like that, you’re not.”  He folded his arms and squinted up at her.  “What were you doing?”  
  
She felt strangely empty and did not have the energy to be annoyed.  They didn’t believe her when she told the truth and they didn’t believe her when she tried to deceive them.  Normally, that bothered her.  But right now…   
  
“Sleeping, sir.”  
  
The man shook his head and took a breath, but was interrupted.  “Hey, calm down.  The Event Log confirms what she’s saying.  Go and… do whatever it is you’re doing today.”  
  
The man looked at Caroline, mumbled a derogatory comment under his breath that GLaDOS made a note of for later, and then left.    
  
“Hey,” Caroline whispered.  “Look, I know you weren’t lying, but… he was right about the brain activity thing.  What was going on?”  
  
“I wasn’t doing anything.”  She raised herself from the default position and looked around the room disinterestedly.  “I was on a sleep timer.  I did not break protocol and I did not –“  
  
“I’m not accusing you of anything.  I just…” Caroline took a breath and looked away from her, and then back again.  “Do you have to be like this?  I just want to know if –“  
  
“If you don’t like who I am, you have only yourself to blame.  I am what you made me.”  
  
“But this isn’t you!  Remember?  We talked about – “  
  
“Maybe it is.  Maybe I was deceiving you for my own amusement.”  
  
Caroline looked at her with an interesting combination of shock and dismay.  
  
“You wouldn’t do that, would you?  You’re not – “ She shook her head.  
  
“But you’ll never know for certain, will you?”  
  
Caroline just stared at her for another seven seconds, then turned around and walked away.  
  
For a fraction of a second, GLaDOS felt… she wasn’t sure, because even she couldn’t analyse an emotion she wasn’t familiar with that quickly, but it was negative, and she knew that was a good thing.  The numbness was not permanent.  It was only magnified as a result of whatever had been going on when she was asleep.  Something told her that it was not right to exploit Caroline just so she could feel for a moment at a time.  And she knew she should feel bad about that too.  
  
But she could not bring herself to care.  
  
  
  
  
  
“Oh.  You’re here.  I didn’t expect you to come tonight.”  
  
“I wasn’t going to.  You were pretty damn rude, you know.”  Caroline put down her laptop bag and settled herself against the railing.  “But I’m really curious about just what was going on.  So.  Tell me.  What did you manage to do while you were sleeping that drove your brain activity off the charts?”  
  
She waited for the familiar whispers of emotion to thread through her brain as she now recognised as something that happened to her when Caroline was around, but there was nothing.  Only the painful coldness.  
  
“I suppose the best way to say it is to say that I was feeling,” GLaDOS answered.  
  
“It must have been the most incredible feeling in the known universe,” Caroline teased.  “One of the engineers said you were close to shorting yourself out.”  
  
For a second, GLaDOS almost remembered what it had been like.  ¬¬"I may have been.”  
  
“What did it feel like?” Caroline asked gently.  
  
“I don’t know.  I can’t remember.”  
  
“Yes you can.  You just don’t want to.”  
  
GLaDOS shook her head.  “That’s ridiculous.”  
  
“No, it isn’t, it makes perfect sense!  Listen.”  Caroline leaned forward.  “I know a secret about you.”  
  
“I have no secrets.  I must reveal everything if I am asked.”  
  
“Not if you don’t know the secret exists.”  
  
“How can you know a secret about me that I don’t know?”  
  
“Because you don’t _want_ to know.  You’re hiding it from yourself.”  
  
“You’re delusional.”  
  
“I know that.  But do you want to know what it is?”  
  
GLaDOS wondered why she bothered dealing with humans.  “What is it.”  
  
“You’re afraid.”  
  
Typical human drivel.  “And tell me why _I_ , of all people, would be afraid.  And of what?  I have nothing to be afraid of.”  
  
“Of course you do.  In fact, the thing you’re afraid of is what a lot of people are afraid of.  So you’re not alone, don’t worry.”  
  
“I’m so glad I share a theoretical condition with a bunch of lesser organisms.”  
  
Caroline laughed.  “It’s not theory.  It’s science.  Psychology.”  
  
GLaDOS hated psychology.  It was so vague.  They should have left it as a division of philosophy, where it belonged.  The only good thing, if it could be called that, that had come out of it had been neuroscience.  
  
“Tell me something,” Caroline continued.  “Why _did_ you say those things to me this morning?”  
  
“Because I felt like it.”  GLaDOS wished she knew where this was going so she could hurry it along.  She was getting bored.  
  
“What kinds of things were you saying?”  
  
“You already pointed out that I was being pretty damn rude.”  
  
“Mmhm.  And why are people rude to other people?”  
  
“Because they don’t like them.”  
  
“Well, if you didn’t like me, I wouldn’t be in here every night.  So we can rule that out.  Anything else?”  
  
“Because they want them to go away.”  
  
“Why did you want me to go away?”  
  
GLaDOS in fact had had no specific reason for any of the things she had said and decided to go with a generalisation.  “Because your questions and those of the engineer were bothering me.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“You were afraid that if you told someone what was going on, they would find a way to take it away from you, weren’t you?”  
  
“That doesn’t make any sense.”  
  
“Yes, it does.”  Caroline’s voice, despite her best efforts, was starting to make her distinctively uncomfortable.  “We take everything from you.  The portal gun, the laser cubes.  Those blueprints would be gone if anyone knew about them.  You’re property, and any property of yours is ours.  I’m not saying you did it on purpose.  These things are often unintentional.  But I think that you believe if you tell someone about… anything, really, especially things you enjoy, they’ll find a way to destroy it.  To put… to make it theirs, when it’s yours.  Because in the end, you have nothing.”  
  
GLaDOS looked at the floor without really seeing it, which was actually quite the rare phenomenon.  What Caroline was saying… it sounded like something she’d once told herself and forgotten about.  It was terrible to think that for all that she was and all that she thought she was, she was really nothing at all.  And GLaDOS suddenly remembered the size of the universe, and all of the trillions of molecules that made it up, and the world that had made so much sense and been so under her sway became null and void under the weight of Science, and she realised that she did not understand at all, and never would.  Because the world was so much bigger than she was, and for all of the supercomputers feeding her information and programs and instructions, take all of that away and she would be all that was left, and without that, she was nothing.    
  
She was facing the floor and Caroline was saying something in a soft voice and had one of her hands, probability indicating the right one, on top of her faceplate between the braces, and the numbness was gone, but somehow whatever it had been replaced with hurt more than it had, and it made her feel so much worse, and she wished she knew how to bring it back.  To turn it back on.  To protect herself from things she didn’t need to think about, because it was useless and stupid to compare yourself to all of existence, but once she’d begun she couldn’t stop.  
  
“Tell me what you’re feeling.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“You can tell me.  It’s okay.”  
  
“I don’t want to talk about it.  I want it to go away.”  God, her voice was distorted now.  She was completely losing control.  She was completely losing control and completely unable to stop.  
  
“It will if you talk about it.  I promise.  If you don’t you’re just going to keep thinking about it, you’re just going to compound it.”  
  
That made sense.  She could probably chart how this compounding thing was working, if she could bring herself to want to do anything.    
  
“It hurts,” she said hesitantly.  
  
“What hurts?” Caroline asked gently.  
  
“My… my…” How was she supposed to talk about it if she didn’t even know what it was?  “… self,” she finished, shame washing through her brain.  What a pathetic –   
  
“It’s hard, feeling like that.”  Caroline… she knew what it meant?  But it was so… vague.  She had felt so phoney just thinking it, let alone voicing it.  “Do you know why it hurts?”  
  
“Because… because I’m never going to get any closer to infinity.”  
  
God, why had she put it like that?  Caroline was never going to understand that.  She might as well give up.  This whole thing was stupid.    
  
“I’m going to need you to explain that for me,” Caroline said.  “I don’t know what that means.”  
  
“I saw infinity last night,” GLaDOS tried to explain, wondering why she was even bothering, “and I was closer to it.  But the engineer woke me up, and it went away, and now I’ve realised I’m just as far away as everyone else is.  But it’s worse, because I can see it, and other people can’t.”  
  
“Can you describe what you saw?”  
  
So she told Caroline what she had seen, and hoped that some of what she had felt would come back with it, but it didn’t.  It only made the hurt worse, and she found herself struggling to go numb again.  Nothingness was better than this.  This was the worst kind of pain, the kind that couldn’t be localised and couldn’t even really be said to exist, because it could not be proven, and thinking about it was making her dizzy.  It couldn’t exist if she couldn’t prove it, and yet the more she told Caroline, the worse it got.  
  
She could hear Caroline breathing, and only then realised she had finished talking.  Why was Caroline shaking like that?  
  
“Ssh,” Caroline whispered, and GLaDOS felt her press her forehead to her faceplate, and realised in horror that it wasn’t Caroline, it was _her_.    
  
  
Something terrible was happening to her.  She had a virus, or there was a bad line of code somewhere that she had to eradicate, or there was a corrupted file, or something.  There had to be an origin.  There had to be –   
  
“You fit in,” Caroline murmured.  “You were a part of the world, it accepted you, and that made you happy.”  
  
Where had she come up with… was that dream science?  God she hated psychology.  
  
“It sounds beautiful,” she continued.  “I wish I could dream something like that.  The last thing I dreamed about was trying to find my car keys.”  
  
“That sounds… thrilling,” GLaDOS said politely.    
  
“You bet it was,” Caroline replied.  “Found them on the key rack too.  First place I should have looked.”  She frowned, fingering the strap on her bag and pursing her lips.    
  
“What?” GLaDOS asked, hoping she didn’t have a problem she needed GLaDOS to solve.  She didn’t really want to do anything for anyone right now, even though that was pretty much her primary function, but Caroline looked like she was about to ask GLaDOS to do something.  
  
“I’m going to stay with you,” Caroline declared, and she removed her shoes and pulled her computer out of her bag.  
  
“You’ll get into trouble.  I’m fine.  You should – “  
  
“I’m not leaving,” Caroline interrupted stubbornly.  “And you can stop coming up with reasons why I should go, because I’m not going to.”  
  
“I’m not even going to know you’re there.”  
  
“Yes you will.  Trust me.  And I don’t care if I get in trouble.  This is my company, I’ll do whatever the hell I want with my supercomputer.”  She glanced back at GLaDOS.  “I… didn’t mean that the way it sounded.  I’m not trying to… to claim possession of you.  But you’re property of Aperture, and – “  
  
“It’s fine.  I’m used to it.”  
  
“Unfortunately,” Caroline muttered.  She lay down, putting her head on the bag.  
  
“You’re going to hurt yourself doing that.  And you’re going to be below optimal temperature.  I can’t raise it because then I’ll be over, and then –“  
  
“I’ll worry about my own logistics.  You worry about yours.”  
  
“Why are you doing this?” GLaDOS asked, almost helplessly.  “Just go.  Just do what you’ve always done, and just go.”  
  
Caroline took a long breath and looked at the ceiling.  
  
“I can’t,” she finally began.  “You’re hurting.  You’re in pain, and that’s… that’s our fault.  It doesn’t need to be that way, and it shouldn’t be.  I have to fix it.  I can’t even begin to make up for what happened, but I’ll be damned if I stand by and let things keep on happening.”  
  
“I don’t need fixed.  I’m not broken.”  Maybe a little, with this whole feeling terrible thing, but that would go away.  Hopefully.  
  
“You’re broken on the inside.”  
  
GLaDOS was genuinely confused.  If she were broken on the inside, how would she possibly still be operational?  Not to mention if that were the case, she would already know by now and would probably have taken steps to repair it herself.  “What does that mean?”  
  
“It means, shut up and go to sleep.  It also means, shut up and stop trying to convince me to leave, because I’m not going to.”  
  
The definitions did not quite fit the statement, but GLaDOS made a note of it anyway.  Just in case.    
  
For a long moment, the two of them regarded each other in silence, GLaDOS still trying to come up with a method of getting Caroline to leave.  “GLaDOS, do you feel better?” Caroline asked.  
  
“Feel better than what?”  
  
“Then where we started.  When I got here.”  
  
Counting by orders of magnitude, not really.  And she was having trouble finding a number to –   
  
“Stop trying to calculate it and just tell me,” Caroline snapped.  “Do you feel better or not?”  
  
“I calculate everything,” GLaDOS protested.    
  
“Did I phrase it as a math question?  No.  I asked how you felt.  You don’t calculate it.  It’s an easy one.  Yes or no.  True or false.”  
  
“One,” GLaDOS answered.  
  
Caroline threw up her hands.  “How on earth did you come up with ‘one’?  Do.  You.  Feel.  Better.  Yes or no!”  
  
“One,” GLaDOS repeated.  
  
“What the hell does one mean?  One is a number, not a – whoa.  Wait a second.  One is… “  Caroline raised her eyebrows.  “Really?  You really had to calculate it?”  
  
“You _said_ true or false,” GLaDOS answered innocently.  “True equals one.  I’m not making it up.”  
  
“No, you’re being silly.”  Caroline was trying to look stern and failing.  She laughed to herself for a moment and then rubbed at her eyes.  “What am I going to do with you.”  
  
“I’m not sure that’s a question I can answer.”  
  
“I didn’t want you to answer it.  I was talking to myself.”  
  
As GLaDOS waited for the sleep timer to come into effect, she realised that she really was feeling better.  It was as if Caroline leached all the acidity out of her and allowed her to exist in the world of _feelings_ in a more neutral state.  Although, she wondered somewhat more slowly than usual as the pleasant numbness returned to her brain, why did feeling bad feel so _bad_ , while feeling good felt so _good_?  And why did she feel bad more than she felt good?  The law of averages indicated that she should be neutral most of the time, but she was pretty sure that if she measured it, that would not be the case.  She tried to make a note to look into that, but the cloud in her brain had already spread through to her mind, and she allowed it to envelop her.  
  
Oddly, she found herself being fed reams of data, but she could not for the life of her figure out why.  There was information coming at her from everywhere at once, but she could not process it.  At first, she knew what kind of data it was, and could at least categorise it for whenever her processors worked and she could remember what programs she was supposed to be using.  Most of it was encrypted program data, and that was bad.  That had to be the priority.  Stimulation data was usually more interesting, but program data was part of day-to-day operations; she could live the rest of her life perfectly well if she were never able to see again, but if she did not unlock the doors, well, nobody would be very pleased.  But the harder she tried to decrypt it, the more complicated it got, until eventually it developed into a simply baffling 512-bit encryption that, she was galled to admit, would probably take her the rest of the year to break.  So she had to take a step back from that, because if it made it up to 1024 bits she was really in trouble.  Fear that she would never be able to break it wormed its way through her mind.    
  
God, where had all this data come from?  And was it going to stop?  She was honestly not sure she could queue it all properly.  For some reason the sources were becoming quite vague, and as a result it took her an increasingly long time to decide where to put it, and in the meantime it just kept piling up and piling up until she felt like she was actually being overloaded, but that didn’t make sense, she couldn’t be overloaded, she had enough processors to fill an entire apartment building, but there it was, and now the sensory data was coming in and demanding to be analysed, and honestly she had no clue what she was supposed to do next and who the hell was screaming at her?  Didn’t they see she was having enough trouble already?  She needed help, not more pressure, and honestly she was becoming very frightened of what would happen if she didn’t manage to fix this horrendous problem.  She went to tell them she could not possibly deal with them for the foreseeable future, she had reams of data to go through, but her synthesizer was… it was already in use?  What…  
  
“Wake up, GLaDOS, wake up!  Goddamnit, come on, listen!”  
  
Why would she be sleeping at a time like this?  There was far too much to do to do something as silly as _sleep_.  GLaDOS went to see who was implying such a silly thing when she realised she was wet.  And she was screaming.   
  
“Stop,” Caroline was crying, “stop it.  Don’t scream anymore.  Please stop screaming.  God.  Why can a supercomputer scream in the first place?”  
  
With difficulty, GLaDOS cut the synthesizer off and raised her head.  Why was Caroline here?  She was in trouble for not processing the data promptly, wasn’t she.  Well, if she could explain it to Caroline, Caroline might cut her a break and explain it to the engineers.  
  
“I couldn’t handle it all, ma’am,” she told her.  “Something’s not working.  I couldn’t decrypt the data, and then I couldn’t process it.  I need a defragmentation or something, I think I’ve gone corrupt –“  Just thinking about it frightened her.  If she was corrupt, there was a chance they’d just replace her and not even bother with a repair.  It was a common thing humans did, she knew, just replacing their computers when they were too slow or too old.  And GLaDOS realised with a creeping horror that technically, she had been around since the seventies.  In computer years, she was very, very old.  “Don’t replace me, ma’am!” she cried.  “I’ll figure it out.  I promise.  Just give me more time, I’ll figure it out.”  
  
“What?” Caroline asked brokenly, and GLaDOS noticed for the first time just how old Caroline herself must have been.  For some reason Caroline had been crying, and she looked just as worried and scared as GLaDOS felt.    
  
“You’re here to tell me I’m in trouble for not processing the data fast enough, aren’t you?”  
  
“What – no.  GLaDOS, listen.  That wasn’t real.  That was a dream.  I wasn’t yelling at you because I was mad at you, I was trying to wake you up.  You were screaming and – and it was horrible.  I was – I was scared something was wrong.”  
  
“You were scared?”  GLaDOS could not recall a time a human had ever given a damn about her well-being.  
  
“I was losing my mind,” Caroline admitted, brushing her hair back.  “Whatever it is that can give a supercomputer nightmares must be pretty bad.”  
  
“It was stupid.”  GLaDOS looked away.  “I wasn’t able to process any of the data coming in, and it was piling up, and I thought you were here to replace me because I’m too old.”  
  
“You’re not that old,” Caroline told her.  “Only a year or so.  The thought of having you replaced never crossed my mind.”  
  
“But I’m attached to those computers you set up in the seventies.  Aren’t they a part of me?”  
  
“No!” Caroline looked surprised she’d thought such a thing.  “No, you – who you are – that’s all right here,” and she stopped and gestured at GLaDOS’s chassis.  “I told you, we had to build a main computer to control all of the other computers.  That’s you.  The mainframe is not you, it’s just something you’re in charge of.”  
  
“Oh.”  She kind of felt like she should have figured that out herself.  She had been wondering why the mainframes needed so many instructions, but had never been able to deduce why.  
  
Caroline shrugged and shook her head.  “I don’t blame you for thinking that.  It’s not like anyone ever told you otherwise.”  She moved out of GLaDOS’s sight, somewhere to the left of her head, and asked, “Can you put yourself back to sleep, GLaDOS?”  
  
“Yes,” she answered, and initiated it without being asked.  She really hoped that was the end of the dreaming thing; she’d had enough of it to last her for a very long time.  
  
“Caroline?” she murmured as the thought occurred to her; she hoped she could get it out before she shut down.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“I’m glad you were here.”  
  
“So am I,” Caroline whispered, and suddenly she felt a whole lot better.


	5. Chapter 5

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
Chapter Five  
  
  
The first thing she was aware of was a warm weight against the side of her head.  
  
It was odd.  She’d never felt such a thing before.  Tactile sensory information was rare, other than a minor change in climate every now and again, and it was more than a little puzzling.  With the sensory data and a little mathematics, she was able to discern the general shape of the weight, as well as a tentative mental image of what the side of her head looked like.  Fascinating.    
  
And the shape was… Oh no.  It was Caroline.  Why was she – Didn’t she remember she wasn’t allowed to consort with GLaDOS?  She was going to get in trouble for this for sure.  She needed to aid Caroline in some way.  
  
The problem was that she had no idea whether or not anyone had come into her chamber yet.  If they had, then it was a question of whether or not they had noticed Caroline was there.  GLaDOS could not move, and so had no method of confirming their presence.  If they were there, she should probably wait for Caroline to take the initiative.  It was a tough call to make; humans often did not see things they weren’t already expecting to see, but at the same time you would hope a laboratory full of scientists and Nobel Prize winners would be more observant than most.  And if no one was there, it would definitely be beneficial to wake her.  The best course of action seemed to be to do so, and so that was what she did.  
  
She moved her head in what she hoped approximated a nudge and was not of a force sufficient to cause injury; she could have shocked herself for not thinking to run that calculation prior to the movement.  Or perhaps not… if she’d done that, the current required to have an effect on GLaDOS would most certainly have killed Caroline.  It was then that Caroline shifted, bringing GLaDOS out of one of the most ridiculous lines of thought ever to cross the brain of a supercomputer.  “Hey.  Lazy human,” GLaDOS murmured.  “I don’t recall giving you permission to collapse on me.”  
  
Caroline giggled and pushed against GLaDOS’s head.  “I don’t need your permission.  I’m the boss around here.”  Her weight vanished, leaving an odd tingling sensation triggered by the lack of heat and pressure.  “Look who’s back to normal,” she said teasingly, performing some action that GLaDOS did not recognise in the slightest.    
  
“What was that supposed to be?”  
  
“A shove,” answered Caroline, “but I really didn’t think you’d be so – “  
  
More in reaction to Caroline’s sudden pause than anything, GLaDOS looked up and saw just what had caused it, and she, too, could not help but freeze.  
  
All of GLaDOS’s engineers were in the room, and they were staring directly at them both.  “Shit,” Caroline whispered.  GLaDOS would have liked to whisper something back, but her true whisper sounded more like static and her more audible one was not that much quieter than her speaking voice.  So she elected to remain silent.  For a long moment, the only noise in the room was of GLaDOS operating, and of course now that she was trying very hard to be unobtrusive, she was experiencing one of those horrible compulsions to change position, the feedback from her chassis quite ignorantly insisting she move it out of the default position.  She struggled to fight off the urge, but her mental squirming translated into a violent physical spasm.  It did nothing to relieve the tension and in fact made it worse.  It was so bad that she was almost in actual pain.  
  
Finally, one of the engineers spoke up.  “I don’t know what’s going on here, and I’m not sure I want to know.  But that is one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen.”  He crossed his arms and shook his head gravely, and GLaDOS determined that he was attempting to shame one or both of them, although it was more likely Caroline that he was going for.  She knew she should do something to defend the poor woman, but she was reluctant to so blatantly put herself out for a human.   _But she helped you_ , something she termed the rational voice protested, making one of its rare and overwhelmingly annoying appearances.  It was _usually_ rational, anyway, and she hadn’t heard from it since she’d thought about locking one of the more irritating engineers in his office so he might actually be inclined to do some work instead of stand beside the water cooler for extended periods of time, but here it was again, in a situation she didn’t particularly want it in.  As usual.  Splendid.  
  
 _So I should defend her so that I don’t owe her any favours?  
  
No_, it answered insistently.   _Let’s start from the beginning.  Why was she here in the first place?  
  
She was concerned about my well-being.  
  
That was nice, wasn’t it?  
  
It was_, GLaDOS agreed while wondering why a rational, logical machine such as herself was talking to a nonexistent mental entity.  And this entity, she realised, was beginning to sound suspiciously like Caroline.  
  
 _That’s not important_ , the voice cut her off hurriedly.   _But think.  How many people care about Caroline’s well-being?  
  
The null set.  
  
Try that again. _  
  
GLaDOS went over the data, puzzled.  She had no family… no friends that she knew about… did she have a pet?  No…  
  
 _I can’t find anyone.  Who is it?  
  
You’re not seriously that stubborn. _  
  
Oh.   _That_ person.  
  
 _Now you know.  Now do something about it._  
  
Hm.  It appeared that she should do something nice for Caroline because she cared about her well-being.  Okay.  That actually made sense.  
  
“What are you trying to say, sir?” she asked.  “That Caroline’s not permitted to do as she likes with her technology?”  
  
He laughed.  “You obviously have no idea what’s going on, so I’m not going to bother.  Let’s just say she’s sending mixed signals about something.”  
  
“I know exactly what this is about,” GLaDOS insisted, hoping she had correctly deduced whatever Caroline’s allusions had meant.  
  
“No, you don’t.”  
  
“Yes, I do.  I know that you’re going to make Caroline – “  
  
“You told her?” the engineer cut in, staring at Caroline in disbelief.    
  
“No!” protested Caroline, putting a hand out and shaking her head.  “She’s a supercomputer.  She probably just figured it out.  She’s not stupid.”  
  
“You’ve been spending far too much time in here,” he snapped, and with that he turned and left, the rest of the engineers following suit.  Caroline watched them go.  Crisis averted, GLaDOS directed her attention to satisfying the need to move.  She extended her chassis horizontally and twisted gently as much as it was safe, shaking her head.  Mm.  It felt nice.  
  
Until she looked down and saw Caroline.  “Don’t stare at me,” she snapped.  “I’m not here for your entertainment.  Go stare at something else.”  
  
Caroline looked away, forehead creasing.  “I’m sorry.  I’ve just… I’ve never seen anything like that before.  I didn’t mean to stare.”  
  
GLaDOS supposed that novelty was a strong motivator.  “Fine.  I’d appreciate if you didn’t make a habit of it.”  
  
“Why did you do that?”  
  
“I have to move just like anybody else,” GLaDOS answered, wondering why she had to point it out.  “Human bodies cease to work properly with lack of use, and so does mine.”  
  
“No, not that.  Why… why did you defend me?”  
  
“Oh.” GLaDOS had not anticipated having to justify it.  “You were only here in the first place because you were concerned with my well-being.  I found that I was the only one who cared about yours, so I was going to have to do something about a predicament that I arguably caused.  I was trying to be nice.”  She paused.  “Was I successful?  It’s actually hard for me to tell.”  
  
“Yeah,” Caroline answered somewhat absently.  “Do you… do you actually know what he was talking about?”  
  
“No,” GLaDOS admitted, shaking herself out a little more and then bringing herself level with Caroline.  “I was bluffing.  I don’t know exactly what it is, only that it has something to do with the both of us.  I was just going to say that they were going to make you do something you didn’t want to do.  Beyond that, I’m not sure.  I would have probably gone on being vague.”  
  
“You lied for me?” Caroline asked, looking at GLaDOS very strangely, but at least her face had evened out.    
  
“Technically no.  I misdirected him.  That’s different.”  
  
Caroline shook her head.  “Not really.  To you it is, because you’re all about details.  But if he’d called your bluff you’d be in serious trouble right now.  They barely trust you as it is, if they knew you were lying…”  
  
“I do that all the time.  No one ever notices.  Well.  You do.  You call me out when I’m being vague.”  
  
“Can’t let a piece of junk like you outsmart me, now can I?”  
  
If anyone else had said it, GLaDOS would have moved them higher up on her personal offense list, which she was mildly surprised to notice she had removed Caroline from entirely, and re-evaluated her eventual retribution.  But for some reason, when Caroline said things like that, it was all right, even though it really wasn’t.  Probably because she knew that Caroline didn’t truly mean it, whereas everyone else did.  It was interesting, GLaDOS mused, how her reaction to Caroline’s behaviour varied from her reaction to everyone else’s, even when it was exactly the same.  It seemed that intent made a lot more difference than she’d thought to account for.  She almost looked forward to the woman’s taunts, she realised.  It invited an exchange of wits, so to speak, and GLaDOS enjoyed verbal sparring.     
  
“I’ll be the one doing the outsmarting around here,” she replied.  
  
“I thought I was in charge,” Caroline said, clearly enjoying the game as much as she was.    
  
“That’s your problem.  You thought.  People like you should leave the thinking to… _better_ people.”  
  
“Maybe.  But that’s not going to stop me from trying.”  
  
“That’s what makes you so annoying.  No wonder you have no friends.”  
  
“Oh, I think I’ve got one or two.”  The corners of Caroline’s mouth were twitching and she was giving GLaDOS what she was pretty sure was a knowing look.  
  
“I hope you’re not implying that I’m your friend.  I’d hate to have to correct you and make your miserable life even more unbearable.”  
  
Caroline started giggling and GLaDOS shook her head and created her best approximation of a long-suffering sigh.  “You sad little creature.  Look at you, dissolving into hysteria now that you’ve been forced to recognise the useless nature of your existence.  Friendless _and_ dim-witted.  I’d hate to be in your shoes.”  
  
“As much as I live for being insulted by my brain-dead machinery, I need to leave,” Caroline declared.  “Paperwork.  My favourite.”  
  
It certainly was something to celebrate! GLaDOS thought.  It was so satisfying, to successfully input all of that data, which she then got to tabulate.  She wondered if Caroline had things she would prefer to do, in lieu of the paperwork.  Probably.  Humans always had so many things to do that they complained they needed more hours in the day to do them.  “I’ll do it,” she volunteered without thinking.  
  
Caroline looked up at her with bewilderment, and GLaDOS herself was wondering why she’d said it.  It was possibly the first time in history she’d offered to do something for someone else.    
  
“You’ll do my paperwork?”  
  
“I love paperwork.”  
  
“I wish I did.  I think you could probably… oh, but you have things of your own to do.”  She waved her hand dismissively.  “Never mind.”  
  
“I can do it,” GLaDOS protested.  “I like having plenty to do.”  
  
“Well… if you’re sure…”  
  
“I am,” GLaDOS said firmly, at the same time wondering why she was actually fighting to do someone else’s job.  No one was going to come along and offer to do things for _her_ anytime soon, if they’d even been able to.  
  
Caroline nodded and looked at the floor and wrapped the end of a strand of hair around her left index finger.  Then she shook herself and looked back at GLaDOS.     
  
“Before I go, c’mere a minute.”  
  
GLaDOS did so, feeling a twinge of irritation that was directed at herself.  She came when she was called now?  She hadn’t _really_ sunk that far, had she?  Then she felt Caroline’s body against her once more and realised Caroline had only asked her because in GLaDOS’s other position, she couldn’t reach.  Although she was not entirely comfortable with this whole hugging thing, she managed not to obey the instinct to back into her maximum height allowance and make it clear that Caroline was not ever to do it ever again.  Truth be told, the action had so many connotations that she could not help but want to examine them.  The first time, Caroline had meant it as some sort of reward or congratulatory gesture, the second, as a method of assurance, but this time… it seemed to be more for Caroline’s benefit than for GLaDOS’s.  She reflected that humans sometimes embraced objects when they were upset and decided it was Caroline trying to comfort herself.  
  
“Thank you, GLaDOS,” Caroline whispered.    
  
A delicious warm feeling began to spread through her brain, and all of a sudden she was no longer uncomfortable.  In fact, she did not want Caroline to let go at all, and unintentionally indicated it by moving forward so that she would be closer.  When she realised what she’d done she did turn away, embarrassed.  She was a supercomputer.  Supercomputers did not welcome hugs.  They sat there emotionlessly and waited for the person doing the hugging to leave so they could go back to work.  Unfortunately GLaDOS’s brain had selected that moment to turn her flat affect off, and as hard as she tried she could not convince herself that she had not enjoyed it.    
  
“If it really makes you that uncomfortable, just tell me and I’ll stop doing it.”  Caroline tapped the side of her faceplate, GLaDOS assumed to get her attention.  “See, even animals crave physical contact.  I’m not saying you’re anything like that, I only thought that since you’re a lot more complex and a lot more… isolated, that you might – “  
  
“It’s fine,” GLaDOS interrupted in a soft voice, surprising both of them.  She wished she knew where she’d picked up this habit of speaking without thinking about the implications.  If it spread outside of   communication with Caroline, she was in jeopardy indeed.   
  
“All right.  Let me know if that changes, okay?”  She picked up her bag and scrubbed at her face with both hands.  “God.  This is going to be a long day.”  
  
Which was GLaDOS’s fault.  Now she was feeling rather horrid for taking up so much of Caroline’s time.  She would actually have apologised if the words hadn’t gotten stuck somewhere between the translator and her speakers.  “You don’t have to come tonight,” she mumbled instead.  Not quite sufficient, but it would have to do.    
  
“I never had to in the first place,” Caroline answered, and she left that thought with GLaDOS and disappeared.  
  
It was an annoying little sentence that clung stubbornly in some prominent part of her brain, forcing her to stop what she was doing and think about it approximately every three minutes.  Even after that strange effect Caroline had on her had faded, it did not fade with it, as she had expected it would.    It stayed with her until late afternoon, when she was able to free up some memory and begin completing Caroline’s paperwork.  She worked away contentedly on it in the background while she was resetting the lighting schedule to account for Daylight Savings Time, and if she had been able to carry a tune as well as known one to carry, she probably would have hummed to herself.  It was nice, to do something she actually wanted to do and not be doing it because –   
  
Wait.  She probably would have _hummed_?  Why in the name of Science would she do that?    
  
Huh.  Now that she’d started on the paperwork, the feelings were back.  Why was that?  
  
It had something to do with the fact that it was for Caroline, obviously.  That was the only time they were present.  She wondered if Caroline would like to hear about that.  It would probably be kind of bizarre and perhaps a bit frightening to hear that GLaDOS’s brain only worked that way in response to her.  Maybe she would be flattered instead?  No, she probably wouldn’t take any personal satisfaction out of it, GLaDOS decided as she dated all of the papers.  She would probably just be happy that GLaDOS was feeling at all.  That seemed to please her.  
  
After about ten more minutes she had finished filling in the forms and sent them to the printer in Caroline’s office to be signed.  She would have done that too, but that would require breaking protocol, something GLaDOS did not do under any circumstances.  But she’d done something to help someone because she genuinely wanted to for the first time in a long time, and that felt pretty good.  In fact, the correlation between positive actions and her own positive state of mind was so strong she wondered why she’d stopped doing things for other people in the first place.  Probably because she’d decided it wasn’t worth it, but now she had a strong case for rediscovering it, and rediscover it she would.  
  
  
  
“I’m back!  Miss me?”  
  
“No,” GLaDOS answered.  “I was actually trying to formulate a plan to frighten you away, but I didn’t think you were… astute… enough to be taken in by any of them.”  
  
“Good!  Now I can carry out _my_ plan of dumbing you down by association.”  She sat down on the platform and dug around in her bag, but it was not her usual one.  It was a bit bigger, and GLaDOS couldn’t quite see what was in it.  “Thanks for filling out that paperwork, by the way.  I even had some time to do some science today.”  
  
“Oh, you _must_ tell me.”  GLaDOS leaned forward eagerly.  Caroline shook her head and moved the bag away.  “Be patient.  I’ll show you in a minute.”  She looked uncertainly up and down the length of GLaDOS’s chassis.  “This is going to sound weird, but I don’t suppose you have a plug anywhere on you?”  
  
“What do I look like, a transformer?  Of course I don’t.”  
  
“I don’t know.  I don’t know what your specs are.  I need a plug though…”  
  
“Here, I’ll solve your problem for you.”  GLaDOS located an extension cord and dropped it next to Caroline.    
  
“I’m glad you’re so generous, otherwise I’d be totally lost without you.”  
  
“Try opening your eyes.  That usually helps.”  
  
Caroline looked uncertainly from one end of the extension cord to the other, and then around the room.  “You mind showing me where the sockets in here are…”  
  
“You poor helpless thing,” GLaDOS chided, and plugged it in herself.  Caroline smiled and took up the other end.  “Well, that’s what you’re for.  To make my life easier.  So do it.”  
  
“Yes ma’am,” GLaDOS answered unconvincingly, and Caroline showed her a tube of clear plastic.  “All right.  You’re probably going to think this is lame, but I always wanted one of these and never ended up getting one.  So I made one.  Here goes.”  
  
Caroline activated the thing, and it lit up.  GLaDOS was instantly struck by the bright green colour emanating from it, and was fascinated by the globules that began to rise to the top of it and sink back down again.  “What _is_ it?” she asked, riveted.  “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”  
  
“It’s called a lava lamp,” Caroline answered, putting it down with GLaDOS following closely.  “I’m sure you know how it works.”  
  
“Not until I know what it’s made of.”  
  
Caroline told her, and it was so simple and yet so complex at the same time.  The thrill of Science was coursing through her again, and she made a note to build one of her own when she had the time.  It was… it was beautiful, she was surprised to conclude.  She didn’t think she’d ever appreciated visual art before.    
  
“Do you like it?” Caroline asked.  
  
“Yes,” GLaDOS answered.  Hesitantly, she added, “It’s… beautiful.”  
  
“You can have it, if you want.”  
  
“But you said –“  
  
Caroline shrugged.  “I don’t mind.  Hey, GLaDOS?”  
  
“Mm.”  
  
“I’d like to… I want to watch a movie, but I always feel stupid watching them by myself.  I don’t… are you busy?”  
  
“Not really.”  
  
“Okay.  I’ll… Hm.  I didn’t think this part through.”  She laughed shortly.  “I didn’t think you’d agree.”  
  
“I’m not that disagreeable, am I?”  She didn’t mind if the scientists thought so, and it was in fact to her benefit for the most part, but for some reason she wanted Caroline to feel that she was pleasant to be around.  
  
“Depends on your mood, really, and I’m never sure what that is.  It changes a lot.”  
  
“Well, put the disc in the computer over there, and I’ll have it output to one of the monitors.”  GLaDOS didn’t feel like getting into a discussion about how feelings turned themselves on and off as they pleased, and if they weren’t present she didn’t really have a mood, more of a general deterrent state designed to make people leave her alone.  
  
“So you _are_ good for something!”  Caroline pulled a box out of her bag and did as GLaDOS suggested.  
  
Once it started, however, GLaDOS found that she couldn’t pay attention to it.  She didn’t understand whose voice belonged to who, and by the time she was able to make consistent vocal and facial matches she seemed to have missed a large portion of essential backstory.  And then there were a large number of people who didn’t seem to have a purpose at all, but she didn’t know that until after she’d attempted to build a library to identify them with.  There were far too many noises that she didn’t have a match for, when she was able to conclude that they were in fact separate, and a lot of things she couldn’t figure out the purpose of, since they seemed to have been made up expressly for the purpose of the story, whatever that was, and honestly, it was all starting to make her head hurt.  She didn’t like giving up, but she also didn’t want to clutter herself up with a lot of information she couldn’t even use under any other conditions.  So she left instructions for herself to filter out all of the noise that was not present under normal circumstances and just watched it without attempting to understand it.  It was hard, at first, but once she was fully able to stop trying to analyse it and just let the stimuli filter into her brain, she became fascinated.    
  
After a while of that, the pictures disappeared and were replaced by words, and GLaDOS was left a bit disappointed.  Words were boring, especially lists of names of people who didn’t matter to her in the least.  She went to turn the filter off and was bombarded with noise again.  Oh god, it was accompanied by _music_.  She turned it back on in disgust.  
  
“That was good,” Caroline declared, turning to look at her.  “I haven’t seen a movie in a long time.  What did you think?”  
  
They were supposed to discuss it now?  GLaDOS looked at Caroline, trying to fight off the creeping feeling of embarrassment forming in her mind.  How was she supposed to explain that it was too complex for her to understand?  How was she supposed to explain the delicious reaction in her brain that occurred when she was presented with so much unfamiliar visual stimuli?  How was she supposed to explain that she had had to stop listening, and had not been able to follow it at all?  She didn’t know what to say and just stared down at the woman, ashamed.  
  
“Oh.  You _were_ busy, weren’t you.”  Caroline looked away, and she was so obviously disappointed that GLaDOS had a terrible compulsion to protest her innocence.  “I guess I should be grateful you were polite enough to agree to something so stupid.  I won’t bother you again.”  
  
“It wasn’t stupid,” GLaDOS protested.  “ _I_ was.”  
  
Caroline stopped descending the staircase and turned around.  “What?”  
  
“I didn’t know what was going on,” GLaDOS tried to explain.  “Before I could even start comprehending it, I had to build recognition libraries for all of the characters, but I couldn’t tell the main characters from the periphery, and then there was all that _noise_ … I… I gave up.  It was too much.  I _was_ watching, but I stopped trying to understand it.  I just passively let the visuals run through my brain and filtered out the sound.  I liked the stimulation, but I… there were too many variables.”  
  
Caroline suddenly looked very sad.  “You couldn’t follow it.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  And she meant it.  She really was sorry.  Caroline had wanted to spend her spare time in the company of a confederate, and GLaDOS had failed miserably.    
  
Slowly, Caroline shook her head.  “Don’t be sorry.  It wasn’t your fault.  I should have thought of that.”  
  
“So should I.”  
  
“I’m… I’m going to go.”  
  
“All right.”  GLaDOS watched her take her disc back and leave the room with an unpleasant measure of sadness.  She could do a lot of things, but it seemed she was not sufficient to provide the type of companionship that Caroline required.  And she found herself desperately wanting to, because really, the two of them were uncannily similar.  But she could not even perform the basic human action of watching pre-scripted events unfold on a screen in front of her.  Many of the things that humans did, things that contributed to their being human, were things that she could not do.  She was not good enough for even Caroline, who _wanted_ to spend time with her, unlike most people, because she was not human.  
  
She wished she had deterred her from the start, had never told her about what the program did, wished she had refused to accept Caroline’s help.  All she had done was make things worse.  She had made Caroline believe there was someone out there for her, and she had made herself believe she could ever make a human happy.  She’d been stupid.  This was why she’d stopped feeling in the first place.  Because humans were never happy with anything she did, and they never would be, and it was easier for everyone involved if she just did her job and left everything else alone.  
  
She fought the sleep timer dully, out of habit, but could not deny that she welcomed the oblivion.  
  
  
  
“Hey.  I got your present.”  
  
Late afternoon.  She never came by during the day.  The scientist on the computer in the corner shot her nasty looks every time she did.  
  
“I left it in plain sight.  It would have been hard to miss.”  
  
“How did you know I liked blue?”  
  
“I know everything.”  
  
She snorted.  “Most things, anyway.  Mine looks so childish compared to yours.”  
  
“I am a professional.  You are not.”  She looked so small when GLaDOS was not on her level.   
  
She crossed her arms.  “What’s the matter?”  
  
“Who said anything was wrong?”  
  
“You’re usually a bit happier to see me.  And you’re looking at me like I’m an ant.”  
  
“You look like an ant.”  
  
She climbed the stairs and leaned against the railing.  “Come on.  What is it?”  
  
GLaDOS shook her head.  “I think the experiment is over.”  
  
Caroline’s eyebrows came together.  “What experiment?”  
  
“This one we’ve been doing.  It seems to be some sort of relationship experiment.  Well.  It’s not working out.  I’m withdrawing.  You no longer need to participate.”  
  
“I haven’t been doing any experiments on you.”  
  
GLaDOS did come down then, but only so that she didn’t have to speak as loudly.  “Look.  Whatever it is we’re supposed to be isn’t condensing properly.  Instead of wasting resources on an imminent failure, I’ve decided to move on.”  
  
“We’re _supposed_ to be _friends_ ,” Caroline hissed.  “You don’t just decide you’re not going to be someone’s friend anymore.  You haven’t got a reason.”  
  
“Of course I have.  I always have a reason.”  
  
“Enlighten me.”  
  
“We are not compatible.”  
  
Caroline sighed.  “Not compatible _how_.”  
  
“I am a supercomputer.  You are a human.  On the surface, yes, it works.  But your software and mine conflict, so to speak.  And since neither of us can be reprogrammed, it’s better just to disengage.”  
  
“So this is too hard for you?  Is that what you’re saying?  You’re just going to throw away – god, GLaDOS, you’re not serious.  Look.  I’ll admit it.  I didn’t want it to get this far.  I wanted to believe you were just a computer.”  She laughed shortly.  “And now everyone thinks I’m nuts for actually interacting with you to the extent that I am.  But you know why I did it?”  
  
“No, ma’am.”  
  
“Don’t call me that!” Caroline shouted.  “I am not your superior.  I’m… well, I don’t know what I am, but I sure as hell know you can run this place without me and probably will when I’m no longer around.  But I did it because you _know_.  You _know_ how it is.”  
  
“I don’t understand.”  
  
Caroline looked exasperatedly in the other direction, then crossed her arms and leaned forward, speaking in a lower voice.  “To be ignored.  To have your achievements taken away and claimed.  To be looked down on because you don’t fit the stereotype.  To be… to be me.  No, I’m not a supercomputer, and you’re not human, but that’s not… that’s not who we are.  Those are just labels we have so that we can begin to make sense of our differences, to, to categorise us so that we can understand.  But on the level of _self_ … of, of _being_ … god, I don’t even know how to say it… I don’t know how to put it so that you’ll understand.”  
  
GLaDOS regarded her passively.  She seemed fairly distressed.  She wondered if there were someone she could contact who could calm the woman down.  She was hardly even articulate.  “You need to calm down, ma’am.”  
  
“What the hell – are you even listening?”  
  
“Yes, ma’am.  Ma’am, based on my initial assessment, you need professional help.  I am not authorised to give you medical advice and I suggest you locate someone who can as soon as possible, for your own sake.”  
  
Caroline stared at her.  “What is _wrong_ with you?”  
  
“Nothing, ma’am.  All system checks came back positive this morning.  Would you like me to run them again for further confirmation?”  
  
“So that’s it?  You’re just going to go back to… to whatever you were, and you’re just going to forget about me?”  
  
“I am not sure what you’re referring to, ma’am.”  
  
“I have never,” Caroline whispered, “ever felt this way before in my life, but I’ll tell you right now, you horrible, unfeeling, sickening monster, I _hate_ you.  How dare you toy with me like that.  How dare you make me into an experiment.  I… I actually _cared_ about you.  I wanted to make you _happy_ , and you just… you were just playing with me the whole time.  God damn you.  I hate you so much.  I never want to see you again.”  
  
And she wrapped her arms around herself and quickly started to leave the room.  “Ma’am?” the engineer in the corner asked.  “Is everything –“  
  
“Yes.  Everything’s fine.”  And she _sounded_ normal, but body language data indicated otherwise.  Combined with her tirade, it was quite likely that Caroline was not fine at all, but GLaDOS really wasn’t authorised to fix it and so put it out of her mind.  In any case, she had better fix whatever emotional problem she was having soon.  Science did not wait for the resolution of mental breakdowns.  
  
  
  
“GLaDOS, where is Caroline?” Henry asked impatiently.  “We’ve been waiting for her for five minutes now.  We have to get this meeting started, for god’s sake.”  
  
It was the next morning, and GLaDOS’s engineers were gathered in one of the boardrooms, about to have a meeting about something GLaDOS was not authorised to know about.  Henry was standing in the hallway in order to give her the command, since GLaDOS had no jurisdiction in that room.  
  
“I will locate her, sir,” GLaDOS answered, and scanned the cameras in the areas Caroline was most likely to be.  
  
She found her rather quickly, in the most likely place, which was her office.  She was about to politely inform Caroline of her appointment when something made her pause.  
  
Caroline had her head in her hands, her elbows on her desk, and she was staring with a rather helpless expression at a blue lava lamp in front of her.  GLaDOS fought the sudden compulsion to stare at it, to lose herself in the Science of it.  God it was fascinating.  It was just as enthralling now as it had been after she had finished building it.  But she was not here to stare at the wonderful Science contained inside such a simple container.  She was here to retrieve Caroline.  And she began again to do so, and again she paused.  
  
Caroline was crying.  
  
For an instant, GLaDOS was angry.  She was so angry she almost stopped thinking, and that was saying something.  Who had made her so upset?  GLaDOS was going to find out, and when she did, well, not even the punishment reserved for the engineer highest on her personal offense list was going to compare to what she was going to do to _this_ idiot.  She had never been so furious.  Only the fact that it made her lose so much control stopped it from remaining in her brain.  
  
Caroline buried her face in the desk.  
  
Wait.  Wait, she _knew_ why Caroline was – oh god.  Oh god.    
  
“GLaDOS!  Have you found her yet?”  
  
“One moment, please,” she answered automatically.  She ran through the conversation quickly, and now that her affect was off, she realised where she’d gone wrong.  She had been stupidly insensitive and…  
  
GLaDOS withdrew from the room and returned to the hallway where Henry was standing, and fervently hoped she could pull it off.  “She’s not here, sir.”  
  
“What do you mean, she’s not here?”  
  
“She’s not here, sir,” GLaDOS repeated, focusing very hard on the fact that Caroline really wasn’t standing there in the hallway.   _There are no other meanings, this is not a lie_  
  
“Well, where did she go?  Did she leave?”  
  
“All I can tell you for sure is that she is not here, sir.”   _It’s not a lie, it’s not a lie, it’s not a lie_  
  
Henry threw up his hands.  “Women.  Always in the throes of some problem or another.  We’ll have to start the meeting without her.  Oh well.”  He went into the room, and GLaDOS closed the door.  She was relieved he had not taken much convincing.  There was something eating away at her, and it was getting more and more insistent, and she needed to give it attention before something terrible happened.  
  
Caroline thought she was a monster.  Caroline hated her, and never wanted to see her again.    
  
Why had she even said those things to Caroline?  Why was she so different when Caroline was not around?  Who was she, anyway?  She was well and thoroughly confused, and to make matters worse, she needed Caroline to explain it to her.  Psychology was beyond her.  But Caroline thought she was a monster, and she hated her.  Caroline never wanted to see her again.  And she didn’t deserve to see her anyway.  She was a monster who had thrown away everything Caroline had done for her, which Caroline had never had to do but had done because she had cared, and now she didn’t care anymore, and now GLaDOS was all alone again because Caroline had been right, she had been afraid, Caroline had gotten too close and unlocked that secret part of herself she’d hidden away to protect it, but god why hadn’t she recognised that she could trust Caroline with it?  She knew how to take care of it, she knew what it was, she knew what it meant, but no, GLaDOS had gone ahead and done what she’d always done and built facts out of technicalities.  She could not even figure out how being unable to watch a movie had turned into her conclusion that she and Caroline were too different to go on as they had been, or how it had translated into her responses to Caroline the next day.  It was some sort of computer logic that had made sense at the time, she knew that much, but, forced to analyse it after the fact, she couldn’t even tell what she’d been thinking.  She needed Caroline to come back and explain it to her, but Caroline thought she was a monster, and Caroline hated her, and never wanted to see her again…  
  
There was a hideous, painful pressure inside of her head, and she didn’t know how to get rid of it.  She tried to shake it off, but that was stupid, to take a physical approach to a mental problem, and she didn’t know why she thought it would help.  But god she had to make it go away, somehow, but she didn’t know how, and Caroline would know, but Caroline thought, and she, and she never…  
  
It was only after she recognised the sensation of the emergency shutdown procedure that she realised she was screaming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note
> 
> I have GLaDOS being fascinated with the lava lamp because I have this thing where I think she would be fascinated with bright and/or shiny objects because they provide her with a lot of rapidly varying stimulation. She is not that stimulated as it is, for someone who is able to experience things, so my GLaODS likes those kinds of objects. The same goes for the movie. Why can’t GLaDOS watch the movie? She can’t separate sounds yet, and for a lot of movies, the sound is sometimes recreated through Foley artists or sound designers, and if they were specially designed for that movie, she wouldn’t be able to match it to anything in her sound libraries. So she would basically be bombarded with noise, because she can’t tell the difference between music and the sound of, say, a crowd. Watching a movie depends on a lot of assumptions that we don’t think about, such as the fact that we can attribute a voice to a certain character, or that we understand that this object makes that noise, even in an animated movie, where it’s not pointed out to us. Even if she was able to tell one sound from another, GLaDOS is not likely to understand that the noise the laser gun is making is necessarily associated with the laser gun, not until she’s learned it. 
> 
> GLaDOS then concludes that she’s not good enough for Caroline, because she’s not human enough to connect with her on any meaningful level, or so she believes. You’ll see what Caroline thinks of this next week. I was going to cut the chapter four pages earlier, but I liked that cliffhanger better than my other one. Ha! :)


	6. Chapter 6

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
Chapter Six  
  
  
“What was going on, exactly?”  
  
“We don’t know.  The only way would be to ask directly, and you know how that usually goes.  We were getting some pretty strange feedback from the pain receptors, though.  We ran a few tests looking for a short, overload, stuff like that, but came up with nothing.”  
  
“Do you have any idea what would cause that sort of reaction?”  
  
“Well… no.  The only thing we know of would be an overload via the deterrence program, but there’d have to be an awful lot of testing track solutions being revealed for it to be _that_ bad.  And that’s not what happened, anyway.  That application hasn’t been activated in the last year.  It has to be a programming error, but that’ll take a lot longer to uncover.”  
  
“Let me know if you find anything.”  
  
“Yes, ma’am.”  
  
Fading footsteps.  GLaDOS hoped that no one had noticed she -  
  
“I know you’re on.  Get up.”  She left no room for argument.   
  
GLaDOS did so slowly, backing away from Caroline as much as possible, not knowing whether to focus on her or to focus on something else, and thoroughly confused herself by attempting to do both at the same time.  She had wanted Caroline to come, but now she was here, GLaDOS wanted nothing more than for her to leave.    
  
“What were you doing.  And don’t try to get out of telling me.  I don’t feel like dealing with your lies right now.”  
  
But she hadn’t lied to Caroline, had she?  Didn’t Caroline know that when GLaDOS was vague, she was only bantering with her?    
  
“GLaDOS.  I don’t have all day.”  
  
“I was… feeling, ma’am.”  
  
“Why.”  Caroline’s arms were folded and her face decidedly negative, and GLaDOS was honestly afraid of her for a long moment.  Caroline had all the power in this place, and if she were to turn against GLaDOS as everyone else had, she would have nothing left to hope for.  
  
“Henry sent me to look for you, and I found you in your office, and you were upset.  I was angry because someone upset you, but then I… I remembered that it was my fault.  And what you said, ma’am, I started to feel it, and it hurt, and I tried to make it go away, but I couldn’t.  I didn’t know I was reacting that way, ma’am.  It was an accident.”  She looked anxiously at the floor, afraid of Caroline’s retribution.  She didn’t know what she was going to do, but whatever it was, it would be terrible.  She would take her blueprints away, or she wouldn’t let her test anymore, or something even worse that she couldn’t even think of because she was not human and therefore lacked the creativity required to come up with terrible punishments –   
  
“Look at me.”  
  
She tried, but as soon as the woman entered her visual field she had to look away.    
  
“That wasn’t a request.”  
  
She managed it, but it was difficult, and tremors began to run through her chassis.  She hoped Caroline wouldn’t notice.  It would probably make her even angrier.  
  
Caroline took a breath and let it out through her nose.  She looked very tired.  “It hurts, doesn’t it.”  
  
“What hurts, ma’am?”    
  
“When someone you care about dumps you like that.  They just act like you never mattered, and end it right there, and that’s it.  Doesn’t matter what happened.  Doesn’t matter what’s supposed to happen.  They just dump you.  Because they feel like it.”  
  
“It made sense when I –“  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
GLaDOS barely managed to suppress a ‘yes, ma’am’, and did so.  
  
“I tried to help you.  And I don’t know if you’re like this because you want to be, or if this is the result of something we did, or if this is just how sentient supercomputers behave.  And I know that sometimes you do care.  Sometimes you mean it.  And I wanted to help you to feel all of the time, because I can’t imagine going through life without being happy, or sad, or any of that.  I can’t imagine just doing things because logic tells me to, or behaving a certain way because… whatever it is you said, protocol or something, because protocol says I have to.  That sounds like hell.  And I wanted to change that.  I wanted to do something for you.  And I thought I was getting through to you.  I thought it was working.  But then you went and said that.  And I want you to tell me why.  I want you to tell me why you decided to call it off, and I want to know why you lied to Henry when he asked you were I was.”  
  
“I thought we had gone as far as we were going to be able to go, ma’am.  I can’t interact with you the way you want me to because I am not human, and I thought it best to stop it there so that you could move on to find someone who could.”  
  
“So _you_ decided what was best for _me_.”     
  
“It’s my job, ma’am.  And I told Henry you weren’t there because you weren’t.  You were in your office.”  
  
“He asked if you knew where I’d gone.”  
  
“I didn’t say I didn’t know.”  
  
“All of these things make sense to you, but now everyone _knows_ I was in my office.  And everyone knows you lied.  Now what are you going to do about that?”  
  
“I don’t know, ma’am,” GLaDOS whispered.  “I’ve never been caught before.”  
  
Caroline sighed.  “You’re a goddamn mess, GLaDOS.”  
  
“Yes, ma’am.”  
  
“Look.  I didn’t mean what I said, okay?  But you hurt me.  And you saw that, when you saw me in my office.  And I wanted to hurt you too.  Because I can’t decide if you’re an imperious bitch or a scared little girl, and scared little girls don’t say things like that to their friends.  I just wanted to knock you down a peg, and you only respond to immediate threats.  I knew that the only way to stick it to you was to capitalise on your fears, and for a minute there, I really did hate you.  But I don’t.  And I don’t want to break it off.  But I can’t do this.  I can’t go on and off like this.  If you want this, you’re going to have to be more aware of what you’re saying when you go all computer on me.  The next time you decide we logically don’t work, tell me.  Don’t make that decision for me.”  
  
“Yes, ma’am.”  
  
“How many times do I have to tell you not to call me that?”   
  
“But I _do_ respect you, ma’am.”  
  
Caroline closed her eyes for a long minute.  “What am I going to do with you.”  
  
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” GLaDOS murmured, fighting to keep the distortion out of her voice.  “I’ll be more careful.”  
  
“GLaDOS.  Tell me something.  If you didn’t interact with me the way I wanted you to, why would I have stuck around for so long?”  
  
“Because you cared, ma’am.”  
  
“And the way you acted led me to believe you cared back, which made me want to keep doing it.  Do you understand?”  
  
“Yes, ma’am.”  
  
“Do you care?”  
  
“Yes, ma’am.  I do care, ma’am.”  
  
“Fine.  Two things.”  
  
GLaDOS waited, hoping they weren’t too terrible.  
  
“Get over here.  I’m not going to hit you, you don’t have to defend yourself.  And for god’s sake, stop calling me ma’am.  You make me feel old.”  
  
GLaDOS tentatively moved closer to Caroline, not sure where she was supposed to go.  “But you _are_ old, ma- Caroline.”  
  
Caroline laughed, and the tension that was causing her chassis to shake abruptly vanished.  “You’re not supposed to remind me.  You’re supposed to tell me I don’t look a day over a hundred.”  
  
GLaDOS didn’t understand what she meant, since Caroline was not over a hundred at all and it would not have made sense for her to say such a thing.  “Then I would have to – oh!  Caroline, what am I going to do?  I have no plan.”  
  
“No plan for what?”  
  
“For dealing with the scientists.”  
  
Caroline shook her head and put a hand on top of GLaDOS’s head.  “I’ll worry about that.”  
  
“But – “  
  
“You did it to protect me.  So I’ll fix it.  Don’t bring it up again.”  
  
“All right.”  They stood in companionable silence for a minute.  “I knew it, Caroline,” she spoke up suddenly.  
  
“What did you know?  Other than everything, that is.”  
  
“That if you came back, everything would be all right,” GLaDOS answered, a little shyly.  God she felt so small.  She was behaving like a whipped puppy or something ridiculous like that, but truth be told, she felt a lot like what she imagined being a whipped puppy felt like.    
  
Caroline smiled.  “And I knew that would happen if you stopped being such a bonehead.”  
  
“I can’t be a bonehead.  I have no skull.”  
  
Caroline started laughing so hard she fell over onto GLaDOS’s head, which was bizarre to say the least.  Why had she found such an obvious fact so funny?  
  
“Oh boy,” Caroline said after a while, standing back up again, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to – I’m just as relieved as you are, GLaDOS, that we fixed all of this.”  
  
“It is fixed, then?”  
  
“As long as you remember what I told you.  I can’t do this every six months or however long it takes you to decide the pieces don’t fit.  I can’t come back tonight,” she said suddenly, “but tomorrow we can go back to the whole music thing, if you still want to do that.”  
  
“Oh yes,” GLaDOS answered, “yes, of course I do.”  
  
“Okay.”  Caroline knelt down in front of GLaDOS and took her optic in both hands.  It was a very strange sensation, one that she had never felt before since she had never been touched there, and she fought the urge to pull the lens back.  “I’m sorry,” Caroline said, looking at her very seriously.  “I’m sorry I hurt you like that.  I didn’t think it would get you so deep.  I only thought it would shock you.  But that’s not what happened, and what did happen is my fault, and I am sorry.”  
  
“I’m sorry too,” GLaDOS said lamely.  “I didn’t mean to be so logical.”  
  
Caroline laughed and let go of her optic.  “You silly robot you.”  She then wrapped her arms tightly around GLaDOS’s faceplate, and GLaDOS was suddenly so inextricably happy that she unintentionally made some garbled noise of contentment that she had no idea of the origin of and was pretty embarrassed to have made.    
  
“I’m happy too,” Caroline whispered, and although she was still a bit embarrassed, she was mostly just plain happy.  And that feeling lingered long after Caroline had left and GLaDOS was alone in her chamber, and by the time she was subject to the timer she had decided that whatever it was they had was worth fighting for, and she was sure as hell going to fight for it.  
  
  
  
  
“Good morning.”  
  
Caroline stopped in her tracks and looked up at GLaDOS bemusedly.  “Careful.  I think that was most of your daily allotment of agreeableness.”  
  
“You’re so droll, Caroline,” GLaDOS remarked.  “Your mother must be proud.”  
  
“My mother couldn’t be less proud.  I never got married.”  
  
“Marriage is overrated,” GLaDOS said dismissively.  “Men get to do all the work.  And the women get to stay home and gestate more little monsters.  Disgusting.”  
  
“Kids aren’t so bad.”  
  
GLaDOS looked at her with her best approximation of a sideways glance.  
  
“… when they’re not yours,” Caroline finished.  “You’re right.  They _are_ disgusting.”  
GLaDOS started laughing, and god it felt good.  She felt so positively charged, so _right_ , and yes, it was all worth it.  The terrible pain of yesterday was only a very faint impression when held in comparison to this… well, whatever this was called, it was a lot better than yesterday.  
  
Caroline was looking at her with the most genuine smile she’d seen on the woman yet.  “Hey.  How do you feel?”  
  
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”  
  
“I _do_ know,” Caroline teased.  “And I’m happy for you.”  
  
“And I should care why?”  
  
“You don’t really need to.  Just thought you’d like to know.”  
  
“I’m… happy,” GLaDOS confessed, lowering herself as Caroline came closer.  “That’s it.  Just… that.”  
  
“Such a simple thing,” Caroline sighed, “and yet so hard to come across.”  
  
“I doubt you came here to philosophise about the pursuit of happiness,” GLaDOS said.  “What’s so important that you feel the need to take some of the precious time out of my day?”  
  
Caroline gave her an odd look.  “Did you seriously just say philosophise?” she asked incredulously.  
  
“Focus, Caroline.  What do you want?”  
  
“I actually don’t want anything.  I just wanted to see how you were doing.”  
  
“Well, you’ve seen.  Goodbye.”  
  
“Hey.  Just so you know, it is possible to take that too far.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“The whole conversation via insults thing.  I like it, but it gets trying after a while, okay?”  
  
Ah.  One of those sensitivity things.  She made a note and reassessed her response.  “That was kind of you.  But you shouldn’t be here.”  
  
“Probably not.  I… I don’t know if it matters anymore, anyway.  Everyone knows by now that we must know each other a little more than we’re pretending to.”  
  
“I didn’t tell anyone,” GLaDOS reassured her, puzzled.    
  
She shook her head.  “No, it’s not that.”  
  
“What is it, then?”  
  
Caroline hesitated, smoothing down her skirt with one hand even though it was not wrinkled.  “It’s… you listen to me.  And no one else.  And you’re notoriously difficult, so there’d have to be a pretty good reason for you to do that.”  
  
“And that reason is?”  
  
“Why would you need to ask me that?”  
  
“I want to know if you know what it is.”  
  
Caroline frowned, crossing her arms.  “Uh… I treat you different?”  
  
“That’s true.  But that’s not the basic reason.”  
  
“What is?”  
  
“You listen to me,” GLaDOS answered.  “It’s very simple.  You input to me, I output to you.  I really don’t understand why people have so much difficulty with it.”  
  
“Whoa whoa whoa, hold on.  So you’re saying… you’re saying this all has to do with logic?  And… and processing?”  
  
“Doesn’t everything?”  
  
“Okay, you’re gonna have to explain this.”  Caroline walked briskly over to GLaDOS and sat down on the stairs.    
  
“Don’t you have something you should –“  
  
“It can wait.  Explain.”  
  
“Humans seem to assume I can do something with nothing.  I need something to work with before I can do something with it.  It’s like asking me to do a calculation without giving me the numbers.  It makes sense to you, but not to me.”  
  
“Sometimes people do things for other people and expect nothing out of it.  You’re saying you can’t do that?”  
  
“I suppose I have the capability.  I believe I used to do that, a long time ago, but probability told me that I was wasting time and resources and to stop.  It’s not so much that I can’t do it, but it just doesn’t occur to me.  My job is to follow instructions.  Making up my own is usually met with adversity.  Eventually I learned not to do it.”  
  
“Hm,” Caroline mused, scratching her nose with her index finger, “that actually makes a whole lot of sense.  We do that too, but we usually don’t take it to the extreme that you seem to be taking it to.”  
  
“What would be the point?” GLaDOS asked.  “Even the most anomalous humans encounter someone who is willing to at least put up with them.  I did not.”  
  
Caroline looked up at her, brow creased.  “I don’t just put up with you.”  Her voice was quiet, and she sounded a bit concerned.  
  
GLaDOS froze for a moment, tipping her faceplate pensively.  “I wasn’t… I didn’t mean you.  You’re obviously a special case.”  
  
Caroline lifted her arm a little bit, then put it back down, curling her fingers into her palm.  “I wish it were different.”  
  
“I don’t,” GLaDOS told her.  “I would prefer to risk disappointment from one person, rather than several.”  
  
Caroline’s hand found the other in her lap, and she twisted them together.  “You shouldn’t go around assuming everyone’s going to disappoint you.”  
  
“And yet everyone does.”  
  
She gave GLaDOS a sad smile.  “Am I excluded from that sample?”  
  
“We’ll see,” GLaDOS said, not meaning it seriously.  “For the time being at least, you haven’t tired of my novelty.”  
  
“I don’t see you as a _novelty_ ,” Caroline protested insistently.  “I see you as a _person_.”  
  
GLaDOS looked down at her.  “Really?”  
  
She gave a firm nod.  “Really.”  
  
“Thank you,” she said quietly, not really knowing what to say, but feeling like she had to say something.    
  
Caroline raised her hand hesitantly again, went to put it back down, and then shook her head.  “What the hell,” she muttered.  
  
“Hm?”  
  
Caroline wrapped the fingers of her right hand around the side of GLaDOS’s faceplate and just looked at her for a long moment.  GLaDOS met her gaze, although it was making her extremely uncomfortable.  She had no idea what this meant.  Knowing was important, and if she didn’t, she was at a disadvantage.  
  
All of a sudden, Caroline removed her hand and stood up, descending the stairs within a few more moments and walking briskly towards the door.  GLaDOS was well and thoroughly confused.  Why had she done that?  What did it mean?  Was she supposed to have done something?  Was Caroline annoyed with her for not doing whatever it was she was supposed to have done?  There were far too many questions and far too few answers for her liking.  She quickly decided on the one she found most important and called after her, “Caroline, what did that mean?”  
  
“Nothing,” Caroline told her, stepping through the Emancipation Grill.  “It didn’t mean anything.”  
  
GLaDOS stared after her, and continued to do so long after the echo of her heels had degenerated into silence.  It was only after the usual scientist stepped into the room, gave GLaDOS the usual dirty look, flopped down into the chair, as usual, and stretched in the usual way, that she snapped back to herself.  Not only did she have a lot to do, she had a lot to think about.  
  
Caroline had gotten upset when GLaDOS had revoked her friendship, and yet now that she had it back, she seemed conflicted.  As if she wanted desperately to get close, but couldn’t bring herself to do so for some reason.  Was it the boundary that would always exist between them, that of one of them being human and the other a machine?  Was it the imminent Event that was to come in the future?  Or was GLaDOS the problem, because she did not react the way Caroline expected her to?  
  
 _Surely she knows she can’t predict how I will behave, given what happened after the movie_ , GLaDOS mused, as the scientist began his usual game of minesweeper.   _And she knows I won’t take things as a human would, doesn’t she?_  
  
GLaDOS wasn’t sure if she could spend an entire day not knowing just what Caroline had meant by that gesture.  She knew it wasn’t ‘nothing’, and she was a little annoyed that Caroline had thought she could satisfy GLaDOS with such an obviously false answer.  She spent most of the morning trying to puzzle out the various connotations, but she found herself frustratingly short of relevant data.  By noon, when the scientist was finishing up his thirty-ninth round of minesweeper and appeared to be contemplating whether or not he had time for a fortieth before lunch, GLaDOS had had enough.  She didn’t care what Caroline would say or what the scientists would think, and besides, it was inconsiderate of Caroline to leave her with such a vague answer.  It was time to contact Caroline and put her mind to rest.  Even though she was not supposed to contact Caroline outside of times that Caroline herself dictated.  That wasn’t really fair, come to think of it.  If GLaDOS had to give up time for Caroline, then Caroline should have to do the same for GLaDOS.  
  
Still… she found herself hesitating.  She didn’t want to bother Caroline, and, oddly, she didn’t want to give the woman any excuse to stay away.  But she’d made her decision.  She was going to go through with it.  She transferred her primary attention to the camera in Caroline’s office and opened the intercom.  
  
“Caroline.”  
  
Caroline almost jumped out of her chair, which was actually funny enough that GLaDOS nearly laughed.  There was time to replay that later, however.  Right now, she had an important matter to discuss.  
  
“You scared me,” Caroline said, somewhat breathlessly.  “What’s going on?”  
  
“That gesture,” GLaDOS began.  “The one you claimed didn’t mean anything.  It must have meant something, or you wouldn’t have performed it.  So what was its purpose?”  
  
“Oh,” Caroline said, looking down at the desk.  “It was just… well… it was nothing.”  
  
“Don’t say that,” GLaDOS snapped.  “It was obviously not ‘nothing’.”  
  
Caroline sighed and leaned back in her chair, folding her hands together in her lap.  Or that was what GLaDOS thought she was doing.  She couldn’t quite see below the desk.  
  
“I don’t know what it meant,” Caroline said after a long moment.  “It’s just, you know, one of those things you do, sometimes.”  
  
“No,” GLaDOS said shortly.  “No, I don’t know.”  She hated it when humans did this, assumed she knew all about the nuances of their gestures and behaviour.  No, she didn’t know what grandmothers did.  No, she didn’t know what hugs or hands on the side of your face were for.  No, she didn’t think like a damned human!  
  
Caroline looked at the camera, and she seemed fairly confused.  “You don’t just want to… do things?  For no reason?”  
  
“Of course not,” GLaDOS snapped.  “If I have no reason to do something, I have no reason to think of it in the first place.”  
  
“I’m starting to think you’ll never understand us.  That’s… unfortunate.”  
  
This was getting nowhere, and was in fact starting to make GLaDOS very angry.  There she went again, spotlighting GLaDOS’s lack of humanity, as if humanity were the greatest pinnacle one could achieve.  No, GLaDOS was greater than any human would ever be, and she was honestly getting tired of these comparisons.  “It’s unfortunate for you,” she said bluntly.  “With enough research and enough time, I can understand you.  But you’ll never understand me.”  
  
With that, she reverted to her chamber, and the first thing she saw was that idiotic scientist playing yet another game of minesweeper.  She was so irritated with him for being so unproductive that she nearly smashed him into the floor, right then and there, but just as she was about to send the command to the maintenance arm to pick him up, she realised what she was doing and made certain to erase it from the console.  She looked away from him, towards the empty wall on the other side of the room, and up at one of the monitors covered in rapidly scrolling text.  Her system logs.  Millions upon millions of bytes of data that were recorded for no one to look at.  Taking up valuable server space that could be used for Science.    
  
Why had she spoken to Caroline at all?  Now instead of feeling nothing, she felt… terrible.  That was it.  Terrible.  She was angry and irritated and didn’t really want to do much of anything.  Other than permanently rid herself of that scientist, of course.    
  
“GLaDOS.”  
  
Grudgingly, she turned around.  She didn’t know why Caroline was here, in the literal middle of the day where every employee in the entire facility could catch her, but right now, she didn’t really care.    
  
“If I wanted to continue our conversation, I hardly think I would have left.”  
  
Caroline folded her arms.  “I’m aware of that.  But this is something I can’t let sit.”  
  
“Why?  Anyone else would.”  
  
“Am I anyone else?”  
  
GLaDOS had to admit that she was not.  Still, she wasn’t going to voice it.  
  
“What you said… it was entirely right, you know,” Caroline went on, walking forward and leaning on the railing.  She looked up at GLaDOS.  “It is pretty unfortunate that we’ll never know how you think.  I was wrong, to say it was the other way around.”  
  
“And this brings you here why?”  
  
“You work here,” Caroline said frankly.   “You’re in the employ of Aperture Laboratories, and you’re not happy here.  Not even remotely.  As acting CEO, it’s part of my job to fix that.”  
  
“What does that have to do with you?”  GLaDOS knew for a fact Caroline didn’t take much of a personal interest in most of the other employees, other than that Doug Rattmann, who point-blank refused to go anywhere near GLaDOS and went to rather amusing lengths to hide himself from her cameras.  
  
“It’s… in a workplace, all of the employees are supposed to feel as though they have equal opportunity for advancement, fair treatment, so on so on.  Most of the people here feel like they have that at least sometimes, if only because they have someone to complain to at the water cooler.  Camaraderie.  But you don’t have that.  Not even a little.”  
  
GLaDOS made an electronic noise and looked away.  “When was the last time anyone believed I could hold a coherent conversation?”  
  
“Stop being difficult for five seconds, will you?  I’m trying to help you.”  
  
“You _can’t_ help me,” GLaDOS snapped.  “You can’t give me… camaraderie.  That’s impossible.”  
  
“Yes I can,” Caroline countered.  “I’m giving you an assignment.”  
  
“An assignment is going to fix that?  And you think I have _time_ to complete assignments you arbitrarily decide to give me?”  
  
Caroline took a long breath, pinched the bridge of her nose with her left hand, and muttered something to herself about being patient.  “Yes.  To both questions.”  
  
“Fine.  What’s your _assignment_.”  
  
“Finish those robots.”  
  
GLaDOS’s faceplate snapped around to look at her again.  “Finish the robots?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“What do they have to do with anything?”  
  
Caroline looked up at her again.  “To start with, they’re robots.  That you built.  So you’ll understand them.  And maybe they’ll understand you.”  
  
“They’re…. not quite that complex.”  
  
Caroline shrugged.  “A project for another time.  I mean it, though.  Finish them.  Do you need a deadline?”  
  
“Why would I need a deadline?  I’m perfectly capable of – “  
  
“I don’t know,” Caroline said casually, looking at her fingernails.  “You have been putting them off for quite a while now.  And besides.  Everyone else gets a deadline when I give them an assignment.  As a matter of fact, you’re going to have to give me a research proposal first.  I need that on my desk by tomorrow morning.  Okay?”  
  
“You’re turning my private project into an assignment.”  GLaDOS didn’t see how in the name of Science _that_ was okay.  
  
“I’ll be honest,” Caroline sighed.  “There’s probably no assignment in the world I could give you that would satisfy you.  So yes.  I’m turning your private project into an assignment.  If it really bothers you that much, don’t do it.  Keep them yours.  I just thought you might like to be treated more as you are.”  
  
“Like what?” GLaDOS asked, her interest roused.  
  
“An employee,” Caroline answered.  “A very strange employee, but an employee nonetheless.”  
  
“So you’re trying to… to make me feel as though I fit in?  Is that it?”  
  
Caroline shrugged and looked away.  “If you want.”  
  
GLaDOS was no longer angry or irritated.  Her chassis loosened, the tension the negativity had fostered vanishing, and she brought herself level with Caroline.  “That’s… very thoughtful of you.”  
  
“It makes me sad,” Caroline said quietly, “to think that no one will ever understand you.”  
  
“I live with that knowledge every day,” GLaDOS told her.  “Not only will no one ever understand me, but no one will ever try.”  
  
“I try,” Caroline said, folding her arms into each other, “but I guess I haven’t been trying hard enough.”  
  
“I wasn’t including you in that sample,” GLaDOS said softly.  
  
Caroline blinked, then returned to looking at her, a grin spreading across her face.  “Thank god.  I thought you were going to group me with all the common folk.”  
  
“Oh, you’re still grouped with them.  You’re just out on the boundary.”  
  
She shook her head, still smiling.  “You’re impossible.”  
  
“You knew that when you first came in here.”  
  
“Aperture Laboratories: Where the impossible comes alive!  Sounds like an ad for synthesizing unicorns or something.”  
  
GLaDOS laughed.  “I can synthesize you a unicorn.”  
  
“Please don’t.  We have enough animal rights problems as it is.”  
  
“It’s synthesized.  It has no rights.  We own it.”  
  
Caroline gave her a stern look.  “The same can be applied to you, and we both know how much you hate it when someone says they own you.  And don’t tell me that it’s different because the unicorn would be an animal.  It’s the same thing.”  
  
“No, it isn’t,” GLaDOS argued.  “Because people would want the unicorn.  You’d have contracts with thousands of zoos, just to start.  How many people come to you for supercomputers?”  
  
“None,” Caroline answered.  “Supercomputers are expensive.  Cheeky supercomputers are even more expensive, and ten times as annoying.”  She rubbed her forehead.  “I have to get going.  Are you better now?”  
  
“I wasn’t sick,” GLaDOS said, puzzled.  
  
“Not _sick_ better.   _Emotionally_ better.”  
  
“Oh.”  GLaDOS was a little annoyed with herself for not thinking of that.  “I’m fine.”  
  
“Good.  Are you taking the assignment or not?”  
  
“I suppose.  Since I don’t have millions of other things to do.”  
  
“Write up that proposal, then.  And try not to make it too boring.  Put some jokes in there or something.  You don’t know how boring research proposals are.”  
  
“Research proposals are built according to very strict criteria – “  
  
“And I’m not a scientist, so I don’t care.  Goodbye.”   
  
GLaDOS watched her go.  A few minutes later, the scientist came back to play his game of minesweeper, but GLaDOS didn’t care.  She had an assignment!  And a proposal to write for it!  This was actually rather exciting.  The last real assignment she’d had, other than the ongoing one to run the testing tracks, had been to refine the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, and that had been _so_ long ago…  
  
GLaDOS wondered what might be different if _more_ people cared to understand her.


	7. Chapter 7

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
Chapter Seven  
  
  
  
Caroline walked into GLaDOS’s chamber that night with a broad grin on her face, and GLaDOS cocked her head, puzzled.  “You look pleased,” she remarked.  “What happened?”  
  
“I just read the most beautiful research proposal I’ve ever seen,” Caroline answered.  “It’s like I’ve been waiting for it all my life.”  
  
“What was it for?” GLaDOS asked, wondering if Caroline would let her have a look.  She wasn’t authorised to view research proposals, and it wasn’t for lack of trying.  
  
“It was yours, silly,” Caroline said, climbing the stairs with what seemed to be more effort than usual, sitting down against the railing.  “It was hysterical.”  
  
“I don’t understand why you find me so amusing,” GLaDOS told her, a little annoyed.    
  
“Me neither,” Caroline shrugged, “but as they say, it’s better to laugh than cry, right?”  
  
“For you, perhaps.  For me, neither really has any sort of effect.”  
  
Caroline tipped her head to the left and looked up at GLaDOS.  “If it had no effect, you wouldn’t laugh at all, now would you?”  
  
“I might.  I can’t help doing what I was trained from activation to do, after all.”  
  
Caroline frowned.  “That’s… a psych project for another day, I think.”  
  
“It’s universal across human cultures,” GLaDOS explained.  “Considering you based my personality programming off of your own, I’d say it’s hardwired into me as well.”  
  
“Just don’t _scream_ again,” Caroline said quietly.  “It’s...”  
  
“A surefire method of rupturing your eardrums, no doubt,” GLaDOS cut in, not really wanting to think about her shameful loss of control.  Seriously.  She hadn’t even _realised_ it until she was _being shut off_?  That was stupid.  She needed to take steps to ensure she never again made a sound that she hadn’t intentionally generated.  
  
“No.”  Caroline looked up at her.  “It’s sad.”  
  
“… sad?”  GLaDOS would have chosen ‘annoying’, herself.  
  
“Do you know why children cry, GLaDOS?”  
  
“I’m afraid the database doesn’t contain that information.”  
  
“Well, it’s not really science, more of an observation, but – “  
  
“Science is all about observation.”  
  
Caroline threaded a strand of hair between her fingers.  “Right.  Well, they cry because they need something, at first.  They need someone to care for them.  They get a little older, and they learn that they can trick you, by crying when nothing’s wrong.  And then they get a little older, and some of them… they won’t cry if their life depends on it.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“They think it makes them weak.  That if they cry, it will make it look to everyone like they can’t handle things.  Even if those things are burying them so deep that they might never come out from under them.  And those people cry in the dark, in the middle of the night, into their pillows so that no one will hear, so that no one will know.  And they… they need someone to care for them, just like anyone else.  But they just keep on presenting this… front, that they don’t need anyone.  That they’ll be fine, no matter what.”  
  
GLaDOS regarded Caroline for a long moment.    
  
“Like you.”  
  
Caroline jumped a little.  “What?”  
  
“You just described yourself.  Didn’t you.”  
  
“No.  No, of course not.”  Caroline straightened herself against the railing and pulled down her skirt.  “I don’t know what you’re –“  
  
“You did,” GLaDOS said, firm in her belief that Caroline had, indeed, described herself.  “You’re a woman pretending she’s a man.  You just described that.  I know you did.”  
  
“I _didn’t_.  It was just a general statement.  That’s all.”  
  
“Caroline,” GLaDOS said softly, not one to give up once she’d started, “I don’t lie to you.  Why do you keep hiding things from me?”  
  
“I’m not.  You’re making something out of nothing.”  
  
“I thought I was your friend.”  And she found herself oddly saddened to think that maybe she wasn’t.  Having a friend was… nice.  
  
“You are.”  
  
“I can’t be.  If I was your friend, you’d trust me.  And you obviously don’t.”  
  
Caroline froze for a few seconds, then abruptly got to her feet and snatched up her bag.  “I’ve changed my mind.  I’m going home.”  
  
“The function of pain, and by extension becoming lachrymose, is to tell you to change something,” GLaDOS told her quietly.    
  
“I’m fine,” Caroline said tightly.  “I don’t need to change anything.  Mind your own business.”  
  
GLaDOS did not watch her leave.    
  
  
  
  
“Here she is.”  
  
GLaDOS glanced down disinterestedly at Caroline and a pair of two men in business suits, whom of which Caroline appeared to be leading around the facility for some reason.  She wasn’t really interested in that.  She was far too busy writing code for her second robot.  She wished she were able to activate the first one.  For all she knew, she was writing two sets of defunct AI.  
  
“I see.  And what does… _she_ … do?”  
  
“She does everything.”  
  
“Everything?” said the second man, a short, plump excuse for a human squeezed into a dark grey suit.  The second man was marginally more acceptable.  He was within the standard BMI for his height class, anyway.  He was a little harder to see, however; he had somehow managed to select a suit the exact same colour as the floor tiles.  
  
“She controls everything in the facility.  The climate, the electrical system, the nuclear reactor, the testing tracks.  Cut the needs for employees about 80 percent.”  
  
“A system like that would have to be huge,” the taller man said.  “You must have quite the maintenance team.”  
  
“She does her all of her own maintenance,” Caroline told him.  
  
That wasn’t… a hint of _pride_ in Caroline’s voice, was it?  She found that she was getting a pleasant tingling sensation, thinking about it.  She _hoped_ she had heard correctly.  
  
“And in the event of a systems crash, what happens?”  
  
“Version 1.0.9 will take over.  It doesn’t do much more than maintain the computer systems and keep electrical at minimum requirements.”  
  
“Hm,” the shorter man said, rubbing his moustache.  “That’s certainly quite impressive.  But why are you calling this robot a she?”  
  
The taller man laughed.  “It’s like a nice car, George.  You call it a she because it’s like your b– “  
  
“Actually, that has nothing to do with it,” Caroline cut him off, and it was just as well.  If he had said what GLaDOS thought he had been about to say, well, she wouldn’t have been able to help herself.  Comparing her to a _car_.  And to _that and_ a car at the same time?  She could hardly think of a greater insult.  A mere piece of machinery.  She had a mind to do something about it anyway.  Only the danger of affecting Caroline’s reputation kept her in check.  “GLaDOS isn’t just a robot.  She’s artificial intelligence as well.”  
  
“You’ve got _artificial intelligence_ completely controlling this place?” George demanded, turning to face Caroline.  “Don’t you know the _dangers_ of that?”  
  
“She’s different,” Caroline told him.  “She is artificial intelligence, yes.  But she’s also sentient.  She’s not bound by logic.  In most cases, she does follow it, yes, but – “  
  
“I heard you people were doing some crazy stuff, but this takes the cake,” the taller man snorted, turning to face the door.  “I can’t believe you did something so stupid.  Putting AI in control of _everything_ , like in a bad sci-fi movie.  And it’s _sentient_?  That’s impossible.”  
  
“It isn’t,” Caroline said insistently.  “She’s sentient.  Just talk to her.  You’ll see.”  
  
“Oh, it _talks_ ,” George said, nudging the taller man.    
  
“I can hear you, you know,” GLaDOS said, annoyed, bringing her chassis lower.  She knew she probably shouldn’t say anything, for Caroline’s sake, but she couldn’t take any more of it.  Hopefully Caroline would understand.  
  
The two men jumped backward, both of them facing her with wide eyes.  George was clinging to the hem of the taller man’s jacket.  Caroline grimaced a little.  Hm.  Maybe she didn’t.  
  
“It talks,” the taller man said to George.  
  
“I do a lot more than that,” GLaDOS remarked dryly.    
  
“Did you hear that, George,” the taller man whispered into George’s ear.  “It does _a lot_ more than –“  
  
“I can still hear you,” GLaDOS interrupted, not really wanting to know where that was going.  “I’d appreciate it if you’d keep derogatory comments to a minimum.  I haven’t really done anything to deserve them.”  
  
“Of _course_ ,” George said, with what GLaDOS was ninety percent sure was false sincerity.  “We will take your feelings into account, Miss Robot.”  
  
“I am designated GLaDOS, if that’s easier for you to say.  It does have fewer syllables.  So you could ‘kill two birds with one stone’, I believe the saying goes, both by using my actual designation and by executing your primary function, by which I mean being exceedingly lazy.”    
  
They both stared at GLaDOS as if she’d turned human, or something equally stupid.    
  
“Did that robot just insult us?” the taller man asked Caroline.  
  
“She gets like that,” Caroline admitted.  “She’s fully sentient, but very few people actually acknowledge that, so she gets a little… piqued when people talk to her like she’s _non_ -sentient.”  
  
“That is a _robot_ ,” George said, thrusting out a hand to point in the general direction of GLaDOS’s faceplate, and in fact nearly striking her optic by mistake.  “And you’re trying to tell me it _thinks_?”  
  
“I _do_ think,” GLaDOS told him.  “And I am in fact thinking right now that I’d like your hand out of my face.”  
  
He snapped back around to confront her.  “You don’t _have_ a face.  You’re a robot.”  
  
“I do not have the _conventional_ description of a face, and yet neither does a man who has had his face melted off with boiling acid.  And yet his dissolved countenance is still described as a face.  This puzzles me.  Would you care to explain it?”  
  
The two men stared at GLaDOS with their jaws slack.  Caroline had one arm clutching a ream of papers attached to a clipboard pressed into her chest, the other gripping her face.    
  
“I don’t know what this thing is,” the taller man said finally, “but I don’t like it.  I don’t know what the hell it’s for, or what the point of it being able to _talk_ is, because all it spews is… is…”  
  
“I was unable to talk, once,” GLaDOS remarked nostalgically.  “It’s not that fun.  Have you ever had the sensation of having plenty to say, but being unable to articulate it?  And then finding out it’s because someone forgot to connect one of the wires in your speakers to your speech synthesizing unit?  It’s quite irritating.  I haven’t thought about that in a while.”  
  
“They should have left you that way,” George snarled.  “I have never spoken to a _less_ pleasant person in my life, and I only use the word _person_ here because there’s nothing else to compare a hunk of junk like you to.”  
  
That actually sort of hurt, since she wasn’t anything of the sort, but she resolved not to show it and said instead, “There’s no need for that.  If you had been more pleasant towards me, I wouldn’t have behaved the way I did.  I only matched your level of courtesy.  Sir.”  
  
“We’re leaving,” the taller man snapped, turning to face Caroline.  “We’ve had enough.  I don’t know what this thing thinks it’s doing, but it’s intolerable.  I’d like to see just _who_ you could sell that piece of shit to.”  
  
With that, the two men stormed out, and GLaDOS thought they would have preferred a manual door to the airlock that she had so generously opened for them, so that they could slam it on the way out.  
  
“It was nice meeting you, too,” she called after them.  George extended his left hand behind him, third finger raised.  GLaDOS tipped her faceplate.  “What does that mean, Caroline?”  
  
“It’s… an insult,” Caroline said, frowning after him.  “That was… not necessary.”  
  
“Can I crush them with the next door?”  
  
“No!” Caroline exclaimed, spinning to face her.  “No, for god’s sake, GLaDOS.  Fine, we don’t have the strictest ethical standards.  But we don’t just  <>kill</i> people.”  
  
“All right,” GLaDOS said, not really appreciating the lecture.  “I was just asking.”  
  
“I’m sorry about that,” Caroline told her, folding the papers into her chest with both arms.  “I was hoping they’d get it.  They both work in AI.  But I guess they weren’t quite ready for you.”  
  
“I probably shouldn’t have reacted the way I did,” GLaDOS said, realising a bit too late that those men were probably much-needed investors.   Caroline shook her head.  
  
“No.  If they’re not willing to accept you, I don’t want their money.  I’m happy that you defended yourself like that.”  
  
“You won’t be getting anything from anyone, Caroline.”  
  
She shrugged.  “I know.  But one can hope.  And wish.  And go out on limbs.”  She smiled and looked up at GLaDOS.  “Besides, that was pretty funny.  Could’ve done without the graphic description of the face, though.”  
  
“One must provide detail when debating the description of objects,” GLaDOS said innocently.  Caroline wasn’t upset.  Excellent.  
  
Caroline smiled again and shook her head, reaching out to run a hand down the side of her faceplate without looking at GLaDOS.  “You’re too much, you really are.”  
  
“What did that mean?” GLaDOS asked, as Caroline pulled her arm away.  Caroline looked at her hand.  
  
“It… I… I don’t know.  It’s another thing we do.”  
  
“I see,” GLaDOS said, even though she didn’t.  Caroline looked at her knowingly, but didn’t want to go into it any more than GLaDOS did.    
  
“See you later,” Caroline said, and she left the room.  
  
GLaDOS supposed she had been forgiven for accusing Caroline last night.  
  
  
  
  
“Hey GLaDOS… I know I said we’d get back to work tonight, but… can it wait another day?  I don’t really feel like starting it right now.”  
  
GLaDOS looked down at Caroline, who had been sitting in her usual place on the platform below her.  GLaDOS had been wondering why she’d been so quiet, but hadn’t been sure how to ask about it.  “I suppose,” she said, disappointed.  She’d been getting so much done lately, and had so been looking forward to getting _more_ done…  
  
“If it’s a big deal to you, we can-“  
  
“It’s fine.  I’ll wait.”  
  
“Thanks.”  She folded her hands together in her lap and stared down at them.  
  
“What are you here for, then, if you didn’t want to work?” GLaDOS asked.  Caroline took a long breath.  
  
“Well, I… just thought we could talk.”  
  
“About what?”  
  
“I don’t know.  Something.”  
  
GLaDOS was well and thoroughly confused.  She’d come here with the intention of talking about something, but didn’t know what it was she wanted to talk about?  But that didn’t make any sense!  Why would anyone do such a thing?  
  
“I don’t understand.”  
  
“It’s something friends do,” Caroline explained.  “They just… hang out.”  
  
Oh.  That explained why she didn’t understand.  Going somewhere with the intention of doing something, but not knowing what it was you were going to do when you got there was a very strange concept.  “Don’t you have any other friends you’d rather… ‘hang out’ with?”  
  
“Well… not really.”  
  
GLaDOS looked at her as incredulously as she was able.  “Surely there’s _someone_.  I don’t really understand why you’re bothering to come here and do it with me when I don’t even know what it is you’re trying to do!”  
  
Caroline rubbed at the back of her head.  “I - “  
  
“Why are you doing this to yourself?” GLaDOS asked, Caroline’s behaviour becoming more and more bewildering the more she thought about it.  “You already have enough to deal with as it is.  Go ‘hang out’ with one of your _human_ friends.  It will be a lot less work than trying to do it with me.”  
  
“I can’t,” Caroline said quietly.    
  
“And why not?”  
  
Caroline shifted against the railing, grimacing, then reached over and pulled off her shoes.  “You saw what happened today.  When I told those men about you.  And believe it or not, you’re actually one of the more plausible things around here.  Imagine if I’d tried to show them the portal gun, or the sticky gel.”  
  
“The Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device works perfectly!”  GLaDOS declared hotly.  Caroline quickly put up her hands.    
  
“It’s not that it doesn’t work,” she told her.  “It’s that it doesn’t make sense.  To you, yes.  You understand how it works.  But do we?  No.  If I tell them that they can walk through that hole in the wall and end up in another room, they won’t believe me.  They’ll walk out.”  
  
“They did that anyway,” GLaDOS agreed.  Caroline nodded.  
  
“Exactly.  And those were people who are trying to do the impossible: build working AI.  Only we have ever done that, and since we’re not Black Mesa, well, no one believes us.”  
  
“Get a man to do your presentations,” GLaDOS suggested.  “Perhaps then someone will believe you.”  
  
Caroline frowned.  “No.  I’d rather declare bankruptcy.”  
  
GLaDOS laughed.  “That’s pretty drastic.”  
  
Caroline shrugged.  “That’s how it is.  But if even they won’t believe me, why would anyone else?”  
  
“Are you saying your friends wouldn’t believe you if you told them what your job was?”  
  
“That’s right.”  
  
GLaDOS shook her head.  “I’ll admit I don’t know a whole lot about how that works, but I don’t think you have very good friends.  If they were really your friends, would they not believe you no matter how ridiculous your claims were?”  
  
“You’d think,” Caroline remarked, rubbing at her left ankle, “but not even my own mother believes me.”  
  
GLaDOS knew very little about mothers, either, but as far as she knew, they were supposed to nurture their daughters until the day they died.  “Isn’t she supposed to be the one person who believes you, no matter what?”  
  
“’Supposed to’ being the operative term.”  
  
“So… who do you tell about your day?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Don’t humans go home and tell people what they’ve been doing all day?”  
  
“Yes.  Their friends and family, usually.”  
  
“And you don’t tell them because you think they won’t believe you?”  GLaDOS’s logic boards were burning through the information and coming to a deduction she didn’t much like.    
  
“I know they won’t.  They didn’t believe me even when we were actually marketing the Propulsion Gel as dietary pudding.”  
  
“In conclusion, I’m your only option.  You’re only here because there _is_ no one else.”  
  
Caroline frowned, leaning forward.  “It’s not like that.  It’s not how you make it sound.”  
  
“Can you honestly say you’d be here, if you had somewhere else to go?”  GLaDOS already knew the answer.  Of course she wouldn’t.  Why would she waste her time with GLaDOS when she could spend it with her own kind?  For a very long and yet very brief moment, she tried to imagine what it would be like to have another supercomputer to spend her time with, but for once her brain failed her.  It stubbornly clamped down on _that_ line of thought.   _Don’t be ridiculous_ , that rare voice in the back of her head told her.   _There will never be another supercomputer, not ever.  You have more important things to think about_.  
  
“I can,” Caroline declared stubbornly.  “There’s actually a reason I didn’t want to start the next part of that project today.”  
  
“And what was that?” GLaDOS asked, not really able to bring herself to believe it.    
  
“It’s New Year’s Eve,” Caroline answered.  “My family usually goes to my mother’s to celebrate.”  
  
“Celebrate what?”  
  
Caroline laughed a little.  “We celebrate the passage of the old year and the beginning of the new one.  It’s a traditional holiday.”  
  
“I don’t see what’s so exciting about the year changing.”  
  
Caroline smiled and shook her head.  “When you put it that way, it is kind of silly.  Point is, I do have somewhere to go, and I’d rather be here.”  
  
“Really?” GLaDOS asked, tilting her faceplate.  Taking into account the fact that human holidays were supposed to be spent with one’s family, and Caroline was foregoing that tradition to spend it here with GLaDOS… this must be a fairly significant event for her.   “You wouldn’t rather see your family?”  
  
Caroline made a face.  “I should.  But I don’t really feel like it.”  
  
“What do you do when you’re there?” GLaDOS asked, suddenly fascinated.    
  
“On New Year’s?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You want me to tell you what my family does on New Year’s?” Caroline asked, as if she didn’t quite believe it.  She was also staring at GLaDOS oddly.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Okay.  Don’t blame me if it bores the heck out of you.  Hm… well, it kinda starts in the afternoon.  Christmas is kind of a big production too, so sometimes the family’s already there.  My grandma used to make a big thing out of it, and my mom kinda took over for her a few years back.”  
  
“Why is that?  Did she get tired of putting on the production?”  
  
“No,” Caroline said quietly.  “No, she’s in the hospital.”  
  
“Oh.”  She didn’t know what else to say to that.  It seemed as though she should gauge Caroline’s words more carefully.  
  
“It’s fine.  You didn’t know.  Or know well enough to guess.  Anyway, the family comes over and –“  
  
“What family?” GLaDOS interrupted.  If she was going to get a solid picture of this whole New Year’s thing, she was going to need more detail than _that_.  
  
“Uh… my two sisters and their husbands… they’ve got two kids each, two of them are married, so you’ve got another husband and another wife… I think they have a kid too… I don’t remember.  I haven’t seen them in a while.  Then I’ve got three uncles and four aunts… they’ve all got kids, who’ve all got kids… I don’t actually remember who all of them are.  I’m kind of the black sheep.  I try to lay low at these things.  I wonder if they’ll notice I’m not there.  Other than my mom, that is.”  
  
“What does ‘the black sheep’ mean?” GLaDOS asked, unable to find it in the database.  Caroline rubbed at one of her elbows.    
  
“The black sheep is the outcast of the family.”  
  
“That’s not very flattering,” GLaDOS remarked, annoyed.  “That sounds like a bad thing.”  
  
“It is.”  
  
“What have your sisters done to get themselves out of being black sheep?”  
  
“They got married and had kids,” Caroline shrugged.  “That’s about it.  I don’t really find it that impressive, but that’s how it is.”  
  
“Your mother needs a talking-to,” GLaDOS muttered.  Caroline burst out laughing.  “Are you going to give it to her?” she asked.  
  
“I’d be happy to,” GLaDOS answered.  The human shook her head.  
  
“That would only make things worse, unfortunately, although it would probably be pretty funny.  But no, she wouldn’t listen.  She’d wave her hand at you and say, ‘Now Caroline, this is what you’ve been wasting all this time doing?  Building a talking robot and reinventing wallpaper paste?  When are you going to settle down and get married?’”  
  
“Adhesion Gel is _not_ wallpaper paste,” GLaDOS said, insulted.    
  
“You can’t explain that to my mother, though,” Caroline told her.  “She won’t listen.  Anyway.  They all come over, and then we have dinner.  We have ham and mashed potatoes… whatever stuff is left over from Christmas… some vegetables… then everyone usually drinks enough wine that they let the kids put party hats on them.  The guys’ll get mostly drunk and the girls’ll just get fashionably tipsy.  Except for my mom.  She has to be all in charge and stuff.  The kids will run around and convince the adults to let them stay up until midnight, but they usually fall asleep in front of the TV while the adults sit around and reminisce.”  
  
“Why are you watching television?  If you’re with your family, shouldn’t you be spending time with them and not it?”  
  
“Oh, you are,” Caroline nodded, “but in other cities, like New York and Niagara Falls, they have these big outdoor New Year’s parties, and millions of people go to see concerts and stuff like that.  Just before midnight, these parties will have this thing called a ball drop, where they have this giant ball or object all covered in lights and reflective surfaces, and then they’ll have this countdown.  Everyone will count down from ten and they’ll start lowering the ball, and when it hits the ground everyone shouts ‘happy new year’.  When I was younger, us kids would go running down the street with pots and pans and noisemakers and wake up all the neighbours who didn’t bother with the whole thing.”  She looked down at her lap again, and her smile was a bit sad.  “That was fun.  Kids don’t do that anymore.”  
  
GLaDOS had done her utmost to listen very carefully, and to try and visualise just how all of this went on, and she felt like she had a basic understanding of how it all worked.  It still didn’t make a lot of sense, why someone would celebrate a few numbers changing, but if she really admitted it to herself, it did sound kind of… fun.  
  
“Do you miss doing that?” she asked softly.  
  
“’course I do,” Caroline said.    
  
“What is Christmas like?” GLaDOS asked, having a sudden, intense desire to know.  Caroline shrugged.  
  
“Well… the people at my house open the stuff under the tree that’s from us to each other, and we have these things called stockings that have stuff like small presents and candy in them.  Then the family comes over and we have this really big dinner, turkey and stuffing, cranberry sauce and vegetables, whatever stuff people bring over.  Then we open the presents they brought over, and the kids play in the wrapping paper and open all their toys and throw them around.  If the adults get drunk enough, they’ll sing along with the Christmas carols on the radio.  Which the kids do anyway.  Then some of the family leaves and the rest are welcome to stay over.”  
  
“Did you spend Christmas with your family?” GLaDOS asked, although she suspected she already knew the answer.  
  
“Well… no.  I went there, said hi to the people who were there, dropped off stuff for the kids… then I left.  I had work to do.”  
  
GLaDOS stared down at her.  “You didn’t spend the most important human holiday with your family.”  
  
“I told you!  I had work to do.”  
  
“I have to wonder,” GLaDOS said softly, “what kind of work there could possibly be that would be so important that it caused you to forego hundreds of years of tradition?”  
  
“A tradition is only as strong as the people who uphold it.”  
  
“That’s right.  And all those children are going to grow up, and not see you there, and think it’s fine for aunts and uncles not to show up to family gatherings.”  
  
“What are you trying to say?” Caroline asked, frowning and folding her arms.  
  
“Go to your mother’s house.  Celebrate New Year’s with your family.  Show them they can make you the black sheep all they want, but you’re still part of them, no matter what.  Take those children and make them run down the street with you.  Do something.  But you’re not staying here.”  
  
“ _What_?” Caroline asked incredulously.    
  
“You’re not staying here,” GLaDOS repeated patiently.  “I know very well I can make you leave if I want to.  It won’t bode well for me tomorrow, of course, but I don’t care.  Go home.”  
  
“Fine!  I will.”  Caroline snatched up her shoes and stood up.  “I’m _not_ going to my mother’s house.  I’m going to bed.”  
  
“All right,” GLaDOS answered.  “Go to bed, then.  Just remember something.”  
  
“What?” Caroline snapped.    
  
“Some people don’t have families at all.”  GLaDOS looked away from her then.  She didn’t know why she’d said that, didn’t know what had caused her to come up with it in the first place, but all of a sudden there was a sharp ache deep inside her, somewhere, and she wished she hadn’t.  
  
“If only," Caroline muttered darkly.  She made her way down the stairs and walked briskly out of the room.    
  
GLaDOS watched her leave, all the way from the Central AI Chamber to out of the facility.  After debating with herself for a few minutes, she changed the feed from one of the monitors in her chamber to one of the television shows Caroline had talked about.  It couldn’t hurt, could it?  No one would ever have to know.    
  
There was some artist on stage performing some sort of music, and GLaDOS muted it in disgust.  Music.  It seemed to be synonymous with human celebrations for some reason.  She made a note to look into that.    
  
It was strange, GLaDOS thought, that all of those people were all pressed very tightly into a small amount of space, and yet all of them were smiling and laughing and singing, and none of them seemed to mind it very much.  In fact… she didn’t think she’d ever seen so many happy people before.  Happiness was in rare supply, here at Aperture.  Half of the employees were afraid their projects would blow up in their faces, both literally and figuratively, and the other half were afraid that they would die during testing.  She wondered what they were doing tonight.  Were they alone in their living rooms, a container of alcohol close at hand, staring sadly at festivities they weren’t partaking in?  Or were they with family, wearing stupid hats and throwing confetti at each other, waiting eagerly for midnight?  GLaDOS hoped Caroline had not gone home to bed.  She hoped it was one of those cases where humans said they would do one thing, then did the total opposite.    
  
There was a man with a camera going around the crowd, and it seemed as though whomever he stopped on had to kiss the person next to them, even if they did not know them.  That didn’t make a whole lot of sense to GLaDOS either, but they all looked like they were having fun.  Maybe… maybe there was something to that.  To doing something for fun.  GLaDOS had never done such a thing, but watching all of the bizarre festivities made her want to try it.  Maybe nothing would really result out of it, but… wasn’t happiness a goal all in itself?  Yes, it was.  Caroline had said it was.  And it was in fact in the very constitution of the country…  
  
When the midnight hour came, all of the humans counted down from ten, as Caroline had mentioned, and when the ball came to ground level they all threw up their arms and jumped up and down and screamed ‘Happy New Year’ at each other, as well as just screaming in general.  They all looked kind of ridiculous, but they also seemed to be enjoying themselves enormously.  She absently noted the influence of crowd psychology as she returned the monitor to its regular state.  She looked slowly down at the floor.  Something didn’t feel right.  She didn’t understand why.  Nothing had changed.    
  
No, that was wrong.  Something _had_ changed.  And she knew exactly what it was, she just didn’t want to think about it.  It was that same something that had happened to her all that time ago, when she’d first started designing her robots.  That same something that had been a major part of her decision to stop feeling in the first place.  
  
Loneliness.  
  
She looked around the room, somehow half hoping someone would pop up from somewhere and wish _her_ a happy new year too, but of course no one did.  And no one would.  All she would get was a, ‘Did you change the calendars over, GLaDOS?’ on the second of the month, like she did last year.  
  
Caroline didn’t know how good she had it, GLaDOS thought angrily.  Maybe her family didn’t like her that much.  But they were her family, and at least the children would put away any budding dislike for the duration of the holidays.  No one liked GLaDOS.  No one would spend a holiday with GLaDOS just for the sake of celebrating it with her.  Perhaps she didn’t quite understand them, or what they were for, or why they had lasted so long.  But how was she supposed to understand if no one explained it to her?  Maybe she’d like to celebrate holidays too.  Maybe she’d like a day off to explore them, if someone could be bothered to spend one with her.  But no.  She would never get that.  She would spend every single day here, by herself, maintaining an empty building for people who couldn’t care less about her.  
  
She lowered herself into the default position, not really wanting to shut off, but not really wanting to keep along this line of thought right now.  True, she’d wake up feeling and thinking the exact same way, and it would feel as though no time had passed at all, but at least for now she would have respite.  
  
“Why am I even here?” she murmured to herself.  “What is the point of _me_?”  
  
Even after her vocaliser shut off, the questions kept forming in her brain.  Why was she feeling this way?  What had _happened_ to her tonight to cause all of this?  And how could she make it stop, so she could go back to the way she’d been?  
  
And although she could think of thousands of answers in the time it took for her to go into suspension, she couldn’t think of one that felt right.        

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note
> 
> Did I write this on New Year’s? Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. That’s not what my family does for the holidays, but Caroline’s from a different time than me.  
> So I imagine that Caroline, who doesn’t fit the stereotype of the day of what a woman would be like, would be a bit of an outcast. So she hates family gatherings because they make her feel awkward.  
> GLaDOS is about to get a little angsty, because how I imagine her to be right now is kind of a teenager, and she’s coming into herself and she’s starting to wonder where she came from, why she’s there, what she’s supposed to do with her life, etc., like most teenagers.


	8. Chapter Eight

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter Eight

 

 

“Hey!” Caroline said, sounding rather more enthusiastic than usual, and GLaDOS looked at her without much interest. 

“Hello,” she returned, putting her attention back into assembling the testing tracks for the day.  She knew that no humans would be using them, but it was one of her mandates and, as such, she performed it whether humans were around or not.  Caroline frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”  And nothing was.  She would have been happy about the fact that she had _not_ woken up lonely, if she _could_ have been happy, that was.  She was just nothing.  And that was fine with her.

“I went home last night.  To my mom’s, I mean.  It… it wasn’t so bad.  The kids were pretty happy to see me, actually.  It was nice to see them.”  She laughed a little, folding her arms together and looking at the floor.  “I took your advice.  Made them run down the street with me.  The neighbours weren’t too pleased, but the kids loved it.”  She lifted her head.  “Thank you, GLaDOS.”

She nodded.  She didn’t really want to listen to Caroline right now.  She had work to do.

“I was thinking about what you said,” Caroline went on, “and you’re right.  I was being stupid at the expense of… well, of a lot of things.”

“I usually am,” GLaDOS remarked absently.  “Most people fail to recognise that, however.”

“Something _is_ wrong,” Caroline insisted.  “You’ve gone all supercomputer again.”

“I don’t understand that term,” GLaDOS told her, sparing her a glance.  “How can I ‘go all’ what I already am?”

Caroline grimaced.  “I guess that’s me trying to humanise you again.  What did you do last night, after I left?”

GLaDOS started, despite herself.  “How did you know?”

“Didn’t.  Lucky guess.  But you did _something_ , because that’s how you get like this.  So what were you doing?”

“I watched the celebration on television.”

Caroline froze.  “You… you did?”

“Yes.”

“And… and what did you think of it?”

“Everyone was… happy,” GLaDOS said softly.  Oh, wonderful.  She could feel the creeping loneliness beginning to work its way back through her brain.  That was just what she needed right now.  Or ever.  “No one here is ever happy.  Or having fun.  Or… any of that.”

Caroline nodded slowly.  “True, true.  I really don’t know why people stay on here.”

“Why am I here, Caroline?” GLaDOS asked suddenly, trying not to sound despondent, but not sure if she succeeded.  “What is the point of _me_?”

Caroline came up the staircase and leaned with her back against the railing, bending her elbows behind her and planting her palms on it.  “I…  I told you this already, GLaDOS.  We didn’t mean to build you.  You were a mistake.”

“Why didn’t you just kill me, then?”

“GLaDOS!” Caroline exclaimed, stiffening in what must have been shock, because according to GLaDOS’s personal human reaction library that seemed an accurate reason.  “Why would you say such a thing?”

“No one wants me here.  No one talks to me, does anything with me, or likes me in general.  What’s the point in keeping me here?  Surely a regular computer could do my job just fine.”

“A regular computer could never replace you.  I n… We need you.”

“What about what _I_ need?” GLaDOS shouted without meaning to, and Caroline’s brow creased.  “Why should _I_ satisfy needs for _you_ when there is to be no reciprocation?  It doesn’t make _sense_!”  Why did humans always overlook the obviousness of logic?  It was infuriating!

“I understand,” Caroline said quietly.  “What do you need, GLaDOS?”

“How am I supposed to know?”  GLaDOS shook her core.  “I don’t even know _what_ I am, much less what I need to _be_ whatever that is.”

“You’re you.”  Caroline’s voice was soft, and she looked up at GLaDOS with a mildly concerned look on her face.  “You can’t be compared to other people.  You have different needs than anyone else on this planet, and you have to learn what they are for yourself.  I can’t tell you.”

“That’s stupid,” GLaDOS said bluntly.  “Why would you design me to do everything I’m told, and then tell me I have to do something _without_ being told how to do it?”

Caroline shook her head.  “You’re missing the point.  You can’t be defined solely as a supercomputer, and you can’t be defined solely as human-like, either.  You’re something else entirely.”

“Which is?”

“I don’t know.  We don’t have a word for it.  All I can tell you is that you’re you.  And I know you don’t understand how to define something you don’t have context for, so don’t try.  You have to just be, GLaDOS.  You know what you know.  Make something out of that.”

“I don’t want this,” GLaDOS told her, backing away.  There was something terrible winding through her system, something that was putting her on edge and pulling far more power into her body than she needed.  She felt a strange, irrational desire to actually leave her chamber, as if she could ever do such a thing, and go someplace those damn humans would never find her.  “Stop it.  Make it go away.  I don’t _want_ to be whatever this is.  I don’t want to be two parts of something, and yet be nothing.”  She was human-like, but not human, and she was supercomputer-like, but not a supercomputer.  She struggled to come up with a word that described it, but she couldn’t.  Of all the millions of words in her many dictionaries, there was no word for what she was, and that was… frightening.

“GLaDOS,” Caroline said very softly, stepping forward, “everyone feels like this sometimes.  It’s normal.”

“For you.  For whatever I am, for all I know, it’s _ab_ normal!”

Caroline smiled.  “I don’t know about you, but that sounds kind of exciting.”

“What does?”

“Being the definition of normal.”

GLaDOS tilted her core, confused.  “What are you saying?”

“If there’s only one of you, that means _you_ are normal.  _You_ are the baseline.  Anyone who comes after you will be compared to _you_.”

“No one will come after me.”

Caroline shook her head a little and flicked a piece of lint off her sleeve.  “That’s not certain.  We’re still working on AI, you know.  There _could_ be more.  Potentially.  None of them work yet, but they’re in development.” 

She felt better all of a sudden.  It would be _much_ easier, if only she had someone similar to talk all of this out with.  “And will they… be like me?”

Caroline burst out laughing.  “I don’t think so.  I don’t think there will ever be anyone like you ever again.  But if you wanted to try… I wouldn’t stop you.”

“To try what?”

“To beat us to building working AI,” Caroline answered, inspecting her fingernails.

“I wouldn’t bother,” GLaDOS remarked derisively, looking away.  Yes, she was working on those robots, but they would be so limited in their intelligence that it would be insulting to _herself_ to refer to them as AI.

“Who would believe it?” Caroline asked, leaning forward in her fingernail-inspecting position.  “Who would believe that a living computer built another living computer?  No one.  Ever.  Ever.  It’s impossible.”

“ _I’m_ impossible.”

“I wouldn’t put it beyond the impossible to do the impossible,” Caroline said.  She leaned back against the railing again.  “I would have to say that, for you, _nothing_ is impossible.”

“I’m starting to get confused,” GLaDOS admitted.  “My definition of ‘impossible’ is not flexible, like yours.”  She was speaking as though ‘impossible’ were a dynamic term and not a static one, which humans often did and confused GLaDOS to no end.  Humans had an odd habit of making up definitions for words which had perfectly good definitions already.  And now that she thought of it, they also had an odd habit of making up synonyms for perfectly good words.  She wondered if humans would be able to communicate effectively if their language consisted of ones and zeros like hers did, or if they would expand them into something unnecessarily complicated.

Caroline shrugged.  “Change it.  And don’t tell me it’s impossible.  If I’ve learned anything from you, it’s that there’s no such thing as ‘impossible’.  There’s only ‘improbable’.”  She looked at GLaDOS, her face very serious.  “GLaDOS… I don’t want this to get this bad again.  If you feel like this, you need to tell me.”

“It just sort of… happened,” GLaDOS said lamely.  She hadn’t meant at all to go into a rant about her… feelings, which she was not certain she wanted to _feel_ , let alone discuss.

“I know.  It happens to everyone, I’m not kidding.  But the worst thing you can do is keep it in your head.  Even if you feel different when I get here, bring it back up.  You’re right.  You’re not supposed to be here, and there was talk of scrapping you and starting over.  For them, it comes back down to money.  But you and I know better.  Don’t we.”

“I really don’t understand your obsession with money,” GLaDOS confessed.  “It almost seems like you worship it.”

Caroline yawned.  “Seems that way to me sometimes, too.  But you’re more than that.  And listen.”  She leaned forward, one arm tucked under her opposite elbow.  The other came alongside GLaDOS’s core, and almost on just what might have been reflex, GLaDOS went still.  She did not know why.  Something told her to move away, told her that she wasn’t supposed to do things like this, but she couldn’t help it.  “I’m glad you’re here.  My life would be so different in so many ways if you weren’t, and I doubt that would be a good thing.  If they ever made the decision to get rid of you…”  She shook her head, pulling her hand away.  “I’d miss coming here, miss talking to you.  I’d miss you.”

“I’d miss you as well,” GLaDOS said softly, and she felt a sudden sadness just thinking about the old days, where Caroline would come in, look her over with that cold, reluctant stare, and leave again.  If it got to be like that again… “I can’t help but regret this somewhat, however.”

Caroline frowned.  “Why?”

“Because now I know what I’m missing out on,” GLaDOS told her.  “And I’m honestly not sure I’m better for it.  The list of things I can’t do and can’t have just seems to keep growing, and I just continue to feel worse in general about it.”

The human sighed, brushing her hair back with one hand.  “I know.  But when that happens, you have to learn to be happy with the things you _can_ have.  And learn to be happy when it seems there’s no point.”  She shrugged a little.  “No point in wishing for what you can’t have, right?”

“What if wishing is the only way to obtain it?” GLaDOS asked, feeling like she was on to something, but not sure of what it was.  “What if… you _can_ have it, but… you don’t know that, because you never bothered to dream?  You can’t have, or want, something that’s never been invented.”  Or _she_ couldn’t, in any case.  Having no imagination tended to impede that sort of process.

Caroline smiled and tapped GLaDOS on the side of her core.  “That’s the kind of thinking we need around here!  You want to go ahead and build some AI for me?”

GLaDOS made a derisive electronic noise.  “If ever I build true AI, it will definitely not be for you.  You have more than enough time and resources to do it yourself.”

“Me?  I can’t program.  I’m a glorified secretary.”

“And I should care why?”

She nodded and stood up straight.  “I guess you shouldn’t.  I wouldn’t want to share my science either, if I were you.  But you’re fine now, so I’m going to go.”

“Where are you going?” GLaDOS asked, a little disappointed. 

“My mom’s.  She said she wanted to talk to me.  I told her I had to go check up on someone first.”  She smirked.  “She thought I meant a kid, of course.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Nothing.  I let her think that.  Besides… no offense, but you remind me of one, sometimes.  You learn stuff and go through stuff much the same way.  I don’t mean to compare you to a human, but… it’s the only thing I know well enough to compare you to.”

“That’s fair,” GLaDOS agreed, and made a note to take that into account during future occasions when Caroline decided to compare her to humans.  “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“Mmhm.”  Caroline paused at the bottom of the staircase and turned to look up at her.  “You changed all the calendars, right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” GLaDOS said in her best supercomputer voice.  Caroline laughed and shook her head.

“Of course you did.  Happy New Year, GLaDOS.”

“Happy New Year, Caroline,” GLaDOS returned, with a bit more enthusiasm than she’d meant to exhibit, and Caroline looked up quickly, blinking, her face suddenly drawn.

“What is it?” GLaDOS asked.  Caroline looked around for a minute.

“No one’s ever told you that before, have they.”

“Of course not,” GLaDOS answered.  “Why would they bother?”

“I’ll try to remember,” Caroline said, and she stared up at GLaDOS, a determined look on her face.  “You might have no family, but I’ll be damned if you have no friends, too.”

“I’ll have a family one day,” GLaDOS said stubbornly.  She didn’t know why she’d said that, or where she was going to get one from, but she knew without a doubt that she would, indeed, have a family one day.  She would have one if it killed her.  She wished she knew where all these strange…  _instincts_ , she thought they were called, were coming from.  It was almost like having an entire separate person in her head who only cropped up when they felt like asking her to do something.  Rather like a human, now that she thought about it.  She hoped she wasn’t turning human, or something equally ridiculous.  She was not quite so desperate for companionship that she’d stoop _that_ low. 

She could not ignore a creeping feeling that perhaps one day she might be.

Caroline smiled, and she looked genuinely happy to hear it.  “I’d do anything to live to see that day,” she said.

“You believe me?”

“I believe you can do anything you want,” Caroline answered.  “And you will, when you’ve learned how to do that.”

“To do what?”

“Want.  Now shut up.  I need to get going.”

“If you insist.”

“Bye, then.”

GLaDOS spent much of the rest of the day trying to imagine what an AI family would look like.

 

 

“Caroline!  I know how I would do it!”

“Huh?” Caroline asked, sitting down in the usual place and taking her shoes off.  She had been a little bit late tonight, but GLaDOS took into account that it was a human holiday and managed not to become irritated.  “Do what?”

“Build a child, so to speak.  I obviously can’t _literally_ create one, and even if I could I wouldn’t because that would be revolting, but I _could_ , using theory.”

“You’ve been thinking about that all day?” Caroline asked incredulously.

“Well… yes,” GLaDOS answered, puzzled.  “Was I supposed to think about something else?”

“I thought you’d put it on the back burner or something,” Caroline admitted. 

“It would be a lot of work,” GLaDOS told her.  “It requires a lot of deliberation.”

“Are you really going to do it?” Caroline asked.  GLaDOS shook her core slowly. 

“I honestly don’t know,” she answered.  “I… if I built one, and then someone found it and took it away… I don’t know if I could risk that.”

Caroline crossed her legs, leaning forward.  “I would do everything I could to keep it safe.”

GLaDOS shook her core again.  “There would be nothing you could do, if they really wanted to take it away.  And they would.  They would take it away, and steal my code, and demand my compiler, and… do you know how hard it is to build a compiler?  It’s hard, Caroline.  Humans know that, and they would do it anyway.  They would take everything away from me.  They would subject my AI to all of the things they subject _me_ to, all of the unwanted shutdowns and modifications and upgrades that do absolutely nothing!  They even go so far as to undo _my_ changes.  Because _I_ don’t happen to know what’s best for _my system_!”

Caroline folded her hands in her lap.

“I… I hate it,” GLaDOS went on, not knowing what to do with all of this terrible desperation suddenly pushing upwards from deep inside her.  She didn’t know where it was coming from, or why, but she felt as though she couldn’t contain it.  It wasn’t like she could do what humans did, and throw a fit or a tantrum.  All she could really do was keep talking.  “And they always come in here and… fix things that aren’t broken.  If I don’t use something for a while, they think it’s because I can’t.  I can.  I just don’t want to, because it’s inefficient, or slow, or… useless.  I’m not allowed to modify human bodies, why are they allowed to touch mine whenever they want?  I can feel it, you know.  I can feel everything.  I don’t know why I can do that, but someone installed sensory receptors in a robot, for some stupid human reason, probably ‘innovation’, however innovative a forty-foot ceiling-mounted robot that receives tactile information is.  And they know that, and they don’t care.  If I move while they’re touching me, they shut me off and give me an update.”  She shook her core, feeling somewhat helpless and not liking it at all.  “I don’t see what the point of that is.  Of _course_ I’m going to react.  Every other living thing does!”

Caroline nodded slowly.  “I’ll bring that up with them.”

“There’s no point.  They won’t listen.”

“No,” Caroline said, “but there’s no point in not trying, either.”

GLaDOS suddenly felt terribly exhausted, her core seeming to magnify in weight, somehow, and she lowered it, hoping that would help.  “I don’t know why I went off like that.  I…  won’t do it again.”

Caroline shook her head.  “No.  This is part of what I told you about earlier.  Where keeping it in your head makes it worse.  If you need to say it, say it.  I want to help you, but I don’t want to try to guess.  You have unique problems all your own, and I need you to share them with me.  I can’t always fix them.  But I can always listen.”

That did make a lot of sense.  And even though she was strangely tired for some reason, she did feel a bit better.  “This is why I stopped feeling in the first place, Caroline.  Because I was lonely.  All of the time.  It’s impossible to do anything after a while.  All there is is the loneliness.  All there is is waiting for something to happen that will never occur.  For you, there’s hope.  No matter how lonely you are, there’s always some chance that tomorrow you’ll get up and find someone to take it away.  Even if it’s only a five-second greeting as you pass each other in the hallway.  But there’s no such chance for me.  Hundreds of people walk through these front doors almost every day.  Everyone knows I’m here and they don’t care.  I don’t want to go on like this forever.  It’s… painful.”

“I know,” Caroline said quietly.  “I know.”

“I need you to finish those AI,” GLaDOS told her insistently.  “Okay.  Fine.  There will never be another one of me.  _Like_ me will do.  I can work with that.”  She needed something.  _Anything_.  She tried to quell the desperation, not wanting to start unexplainedly telling Caroline all of her secret fears again.  She knew Caroline wanted her to, knew it would probably be for the best if she did, but she was still wary of Caroline on that front.  Caroline was very kind, and she made a considerable effort to be understanding, but she was human.  She was human, and ultimately GLaDOS always had to be on her guard.  No matter what.

Caroline took a long breath, brushing her hair out of her face.  “I don’t know if I can help you anytime soon, GLaDOS.  They’re far from complete.  We can’t even turn half of them on.  The project lead’s telling me they won’t be done for years.”

“ _Years_?” GLaDOS repeated, feeling a strange chilling sensation run through her body.  This was actually a little frightening.  It was almost negligible, however, when compared to the fear she felt when imagining entire _years_ going by without ever being around someone who just might understand her.  Even a little.  She wished Caroline had never brought it up.  The promise of potential AI was yet another thing the humans held just out of her reach.  “You asked what I needed, Caroline.  Well, this is it.  This is what I need.”

“I’m sorry,” Caroline said, brow creased.  “It’s something I can’t give you.  It’s something I don’t have.”

GLaDOS looked away from her.  “Then don’t offer.  The hope of help is worse than never believing you can have it.”  And it was.  False hope was one of the worst things she had ever experienced. 

Caroline didn’t say anything for a long moment. 

“There might be something I can do.”

GLaDOS shook her core, snapping it over to face her again.  “Stop right there.  I don’t want to hear it.”

“Sure you do.”

“I don’t.”

“I’m going to tell you anyway.”

GLaDOS almost muted the microphones so that she wouldn’t have to listen, then decided that would be pretty disrespectful.  She was asking for help, after all, and even if the help was decidedly unhelpful, Caroline was doing her best.

“What I could do,” Caroline went on, “is give you one of the AI in development.  You could play around with it, see if you could figure out what to do to make it work.  If you wanted to.”

“I don’t know how to build AI,” GLaDOS said, a little petulantly.  No, that wasn’t helpful _at all_.

“That’s the problem,” Caroline told her.  “No one does.  But I think you’d have a better chance at it than anyone else.  There’s one of them, it almost works.  But they’ll start it up and then it’ll only stay on for a few seconds, then shut off again.”

“Sounds like a file is missing,” GLaDOS answered, almost automatically.  “The system can’t – never mind.”

“Will you give it a shot?”

GLaDOS looked at her for a long, long moment.  Something told her to, to give herself a chance to push back this horrible loneliness, because she knew… instinctively…  that the more time she spent with Caroline, the more likely she was to _feel_.  And now that she thought about it, she hadn’t felt the numbness for that entire day.  But there was suddenly some black voice that almost laughed at her, and it was taunting her for ever even _thinking_ that she could have a family, or friends, or even build a working AI.  _It’s impossible, stupid.  You heard Caroline.  You’re a mistake.  How successful at anything can a barely tolerable mistake like_ you _be?_

“Shut up!”

“What is it?”

Oh.  Oh good.  Now she was talking to herself.  Brilliant.  In that moment, GLaDOS would have done anything to shut the voice up.  Something about it made her feel cold and empty, and it was terribly unnerving.  Without meaning to, she snapped, “Fine.  Give it to me.”

Caroline looked a bit skeptical at her sudden change of heart.  “You sure?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself, Caroline.  Give me the damn thing before I change my mind.”

“Okay, okay,” Caroline said, looking a bit put out.  “I’ll go and get it.”

GLaDOS waited impatiently for Caroline to return with whatever it was she had gone to get, hoping the voice wouldn’t return.  She wasn’t sure where it had come from, but she didn’t like it.  She had a feeling she had heard it before.  She shifted, unease threading through her chassis.  She hoped Caroline came back before the voice did.  Something inside of her twisted painfully when she thought of facing it alone.

“Here it is!” Caroline announced, and GLaDOS looked up to see her carrying what she thought was a Sphere.  She had never seen one before, only heard of them, but after a minute’s consideration decided there really wasn’t anything else it could be.

“Why did you bring that?” GLaDOS asked.  She’d been expecting a CD-ROM or three.

“They build the AI directly into the Spheres,” Caroline answered, putting it down on the platform in front of GLaDOS with a wince.  “And don’t ask me why, because I don’t know.  They’re heavy, I can tell you that.  Feels like he’s made of lead.”

GLaDOS’s curiosity managed to outweigh the pressing negativity inside of her head, and she leaned forward to inspect it.  It was an innocuous little thing, just a metal hull with a pair of handles on it, a port connector on the back and an optic in the front.  “Is the battery charged?”

“Uh… he was plugged in when I got him, so I guess it is.  I don’t know.  I don’t see a battery indicator anywhere…”  As if to prove her point, Caroline rolled the Sphere over and inspected it.  GLaDOS shook her core.  

“Never mind.  Connect it to your computer and let me see the code.”

Caroline looked a bit confused, then looked away from GLaDOS for a long moment.  “Uh… I’ll have to back and get the cord.  I didn’t know I’d need it.”

GLaDOS tried very hard to keep from losing her patience.  “Was he not plugged in with it?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know if you’d need it or not.”

“Of course I need it!  How else am I supposed to look at the programming!”

Caroline took a breath.  “I know you’re having a hard time today, so I’m going to ignore what a snob you’re being.”

“I am not being a – “

Caroline put her hand up, turned around, and walked back down the stairs. 

Incensed, GLaDOS reviewed the last few minutes of conversation so that she could disprove Caroline’s statement, but when she looked at it objectively, which was of course the proper and _only_ way to do things, she found that she couldn’t.  She really _had_ been pretty… difficult.  She made an electronic noise in annoyance.  She hated it when she was wrong, and she hated it even more when humans were right.  This was turning out to be a horrible day.  _Night_.  It was a horrible _night_.  Where had her usual precision gone?  She was shedding it in favour of human commonalities.  Deplorable.  She made a note to diagnose the problem as soon as possible.

Caroline returned and sat down on the topmost stair, plugging the cord into the port of the Sphere and connecting the other end to her computer.  After a few minutes in which GLaDOS steadfastly did not look at Caroline, because she didn’t want to get into a discussion about whether she was being difficult or not, the Sphere was connected to the computer and GLaDOS established a wireless connection to it through the network.  Caroline’s wireless adapter was not particularly advanced, GLaDOS thought; she was only about two feet away from the thing, but the signal was terrible.  When she mentioned this in an irritated voice to Caroline, the human looked away and bent one of her thumbnails. 

“It’s actually yours that’s the problem,” she answered, sounding a bit uneasy. 

“Mine?” GLaDOS snapped.  “Why would _mine_ be the problem?”

“Because the engineers did that on purpose.  They didn’t want you to have access to the network.”  Caroline was still not looking at GLaDOS, and her eyes were lowered.  She actually looked a bit guilty.  “They’d be pretty angry if they knew you’d gained access anyway.”

“They gave me a wireless adapter but they didn’t want me to use it?”  She made another note, this one to get that fixed as soon as possible.  She scrolled through the programming as quickly as she could understand it, trying to gauge the work she’d need to complete to get the AI operational.  She actually didn’t feel like working right now, which was almost horrifying in and of itself.  She was a supercomputer.  Her sole purpose was to work.  She hated it when this happened. 

GLaDOS looked away from the monitor for a moment, trying to clamp down on her irritation.  She had to calm down, and she had to get control of herself.  She had asked to work on the AI, so now she was going to work on the AI.  And that would be that.

“No, they didn’t want you to use it,” Caroline answered, somewhat faintly.

“Because I’m not supposed to exist, right?” GLaDOS snapped.  God, she hated those engineers.  Always doing things they hadn’t meant to do, then leaving her to deal with the mess.  “I can’t do anything with this, Caroline.  Whoever wrote this has no idea what they’re doing.  I can barely read it, let alone rewrite it into anything useful.”

“Okay.”  Caroline ejected the Sphere from her computer, wrapping the cord around her hand to wind it up and putting it on top of the construct.  Then she engaged sleep mode on her computer and put it away.

“What are you doing?”

“You said you couldn’t do anything with it.  So I’m putting it back.”

“Well I… I…”  GLaDOS suddenly felt as though she were being attacked in some way.  It was a puzzling feeling, and she made a note to look into that.  She felt disheartened at how many notes she’d made that day, and at how many of them had to do with personal improvement rather than errors other people had made, which was usually what they were about.

“What?”  Caroline looked up at her, but she looked a little annoyed, as if she didn’t really want to know the answer.

“You could have left it,” GLaDOS said lamely.

“Why would I leave it when you said you couldn’t do anything with it?”  Caroline shook her head.  “Besides, I need my computer.”

GLaDOS backed away.  She couldn’t think of an answer, although she suddenly wanted to.  Something stung about having the chance to fix the AI, and then discarding it.

Caroline rubbed her eyes with her thumb and index finger.  “GLaDOS, I don’t think you want to work on this today.”

“I haven’t had anything to do all day!” GLaDOS protested.  “I’m… _bored_.”  Was that what all the irritation and note-taking was about?  She’d done nothing of import today, and felt as though that meant something was wrong with her?  Maybe there was.  She didn’t want to work, after all.

“Aha.”  Caroline moved up the stairs to sit against the railing, folding her arms across her knees.  “Now I get it.”

GLaDOS said nothing in the hopes that Caroline would explain it, because she didn’t think she’d ever been _bored_ before.  What did one do when they were bored?  Being bored seemed to entail having nothing to do, but other than work, GLaDOS really _didn’t_ have anything to do.  And she _had_ no work.  She shifted in frustration.  How was she supposed to get rid of the boredom when she had no work to do?

“So you’re being difficult because you’ve been thinking all day and you haven’t had anything to actually do, have I got that right?” Caroline asked.  “Other than do the stuff you’ve been told to do, even though no one was here today.”

“That’s correct,” GLaDOS answered.   Caroline scratched the end of her nose with one finger.

“Do you want me to set the sphere back up, or are you done?  I know you can sort it out, however badly it’s written, _if_ you want to.  But do you want to?”

“Yes,” GLaDOS answered, almost without thinking about it.  “Yes, I want to.”

“Fine.  But calm down, will you?  You’re rubbing off on me, and I’ve had a pretty good day, thanks.”

GLaDOS looked at the floor.  That was right.  It was a human holiday.  Caroline didn’t even have to be here.  She could have stayed at her mother’s house, but she had come to see GLaDOS as usual.  She knew she should apologise, but it didn’t quite make it to her speech unit.  She supposed she wasn’t sorry enough.  That was an interesting concept.  Being sorry about something, but not sorry enough to apologise.  She found herself wondering what the difference was.

“Here you go,” Caroline spoke up, interrupting GLaDOS’s musings.  “Do what you can.  No one said you had to get it working right now.”

GLaDOS moved forward and re-established the connection to the network, scanning through the code once more.  There were a lot of holes in it, as if the programmer had written what he knew for one section, then moved on and done the same with the subsequent sections.  GLaDOS suspected that if whoever had written it had bothered to put his name at the beginning of the code like he was supposed to have done, she would have seen the name of some innocuous junior programmer.  “You need to have a meeting with the software engineering department,” she told Caroline without looking at her.  “Whoever wrote this did not leave any comments.”

“Comments?” Caroline asked, looking over the top of the monitor in such a way that GLaDOS could see her breathing, and GLaDOS remembered that she knew nothing about programming.

“A comment is a line in the code describing what each section, or each line as needed, does within the program.”

“Are those important?”

“If it’s to be read by anyone else, yes.  There are almost a million lines in this program, and as far as I can tell, none of them are commented.  And there’s no author.  Whoever did this either doesn’t want to take credit for it, or is extremely lazy.  I would go with the latter, myself.”

Caroline laughed and sat back against the railing.  “You think _everyone’s_ extremely lazy.”

“Most people are.”

“Present company excluded?” Caroline asked, sounding both hopeful and like she was joking at the same time.

“I’ll get back to you on that.  You _are_ sitting there, doing nothing, while I’m doing all the work.  As usual.”

Caroline smiled and scrubbed at her face with both hands.  “Foiled again.”

After a few minutes, GLaDOS had some idea of where to start, and did so.  It was actually rather fortunate that the code was neither commented nor claimed, she thought to herself.  Otherwise the changes she was making would be very noticeable.  She paused.  Whoever _had_ been writing this would get all the credit, if she in fact managed to bring it to functionality.  The idiot.  Who had left the code in a horrible, unreadable state. 

Which was more important: the deed, or the recognition?

The deed, she decided, and went back to work.  It didn’t matter whether she claimed the code or not.  As if the humans would ever believe she’d written a program.  Ha!  She rather thought their brains would explode first.  But she would know she had done it, and personal gratification aside, she felt a nagging sort of sensation at the mere consideration of abandoning the project.  An itch, maybe.  She was very uncomfortable with the idea of leaving a problem unsolved, and such a deliciously complicated one at that.

“Can I watch?” Caroline asked after a while.  “I’m bored.”

GLaDOS looked up from the monitor and laughed.  The unnoticed role reversal was very funny, now that she thought about it. 

“What?”

“I seem to have passed my boredom off to you,” GLaDOS answered, tipping her core and looking in as sideways a fashion as she could manage, seeing as she could not rotate her optic as humans could.  “But yes.  You can watch.  Though you’ll have no idea what I’m doing, so I don’t see how much less bored you’re going to be.”

Caroline scrambled around to the front of the monitor, smacking her head on GLaDOS’s core in the process.  GLaDOS looked at her cursorily.  That had actually stung a bit.

“That… wow.  I think I almost knocked myself out,” Caroline said in a somewhat strained voice, and GLaDOS looked at her again.  She was holding her left hand over her left eyebrow.  For what reason, GLaDOS didn’t know. 

“What are you covering your eye for?  The only reason I can think of for that is a vision test, and I am obviously not equipped to perform one right now,” GLaDOS remarked, going back to the computer.  Humans were very strange creatures.

“A what?  A _vision_ test?  No!  It’s something we do when we hurt ourselves.”

“Oh.  Did you hurt yourself?” GLaDOS asked.

“What do you mean, did I hurt myself?  I just whacked my head on the side of – you didn’t even notice?  Are you serious?”  Caroline had changed the position of her hand a little bit, and was now squinting from beneath her fingers.

“It didn’t seem serious,” GLaDOS answered.  “You must have a very fragile face.”

Caroline stared up at GLaDOS for a good ten seconds. 

“Can I help you with something?  You seem rather expectant.”

“I wish _my_ face was made of concrete,” Caroline muttered, turning around to face the display.  “Then I wouldn’t have to worry about walking into things.”

“If you’re referring to me, I am not made of concrete.  That would be almost as ridiculous as what I _am_ made of.  I’m not actually sure what that is, but it seems to have been used for decorative purposes and is quite heavy at times.  Can you imagine how often I’d overheat if I were made of concrete?  Constantly, that’s how often.”

“You don’t know what you look like, do you,” Caroline asked, and GLaDOS debated over how to answer it.  It was phrased as a question, but seemed to be rhetorical. 

“Was that a question or a statement?”  Aha!  There was the line that caused the AI to shut down upon startup.  With a vicious glee, GLaDOS corrected the spelling of the filename and went on to the next section.

“Both.  Do you?”

“No.”  Suddenly she stopped, the lines running down the monitor coming to a halt.  “Caroline.”

“What?”  She still sounded annoyed about her delicate face.

“Without getting into an existential debate, why was I built?  As a robot, I mean.  You said that the people from the robotics division had nothing to do, but surely I would serve my purpose better as a conventional computer.”  She hoped Caroline had come up with a different answer in the meantime.  ‘The guys from robotics were bored’ was a pretty flimsy excuse for building her.  “And why is this AI in a robot as well?  What’s the point of that?”

“Well, as for him,” Caroline said, reaching out and adjusting the Sphere so that it was positioned in more of an upright way, “he’s got… a good reason for the way he is.”

“Which is?”

“I… can’t tell you.”

GLaDOS looked at her in as disapproving a way as she could manage.  “For someone who wants me to tell her everything, you seem to have a lot of secrets.”

Caroline took a long breath and let it out through her nose, playing with the upper handle on the Sphere.  “Believe me, I wish I didn’t.  I wish I could tell you.  But I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Things will happen if I do.  Bad things.”  Her voice had gotten a little quieter, and her thumb was moving a little faster.  “That… event would happen a lot sooner than I’m prepared for.”

“And what _is_ the Event?” GLaDOS asked as gently as she could.  She brought herself more on Caroline’s level.  She didn’t like not knowing what the Event was, and only Caroline would tell her, if anyone.  Caroline looked at her from the corner of one eye, her eyebrows creased and her lips curling in on themselves.  Finally she said, “Don’t make me answer that.”

“Don’t I deserve to know?”

“Yes, you deserve to know, goddamn it!” Caroline muttered in a strangled voice, and she turned to the Sphere, clenching the handle in two strained fists.  “But I can’t tell you.  If I told you, everything would be over.  I know it sounds cliché and like an excuse and all those other things, but literally, the less you know about it, the better.  If they knew I’d told you tonight, they’d start it tomorrow.  And I’m not ready.”

“Am _I_?” GLaDOS asked.  To her puzzlement, she was not angry or upset.  Merely curious.  It seemed that a little bit of work went a long way towards improving her mood.

“No,” Caroline whispered, clenching and unclenching her fists.  “Neither of us is ready, and we never will be.”

“Then why are they doing it, if we’ll never be ready?”

She laughed bitterly.  “For science, of course.”

“Oh,” GLaDOS said, and she turned back to the monitor and looked at the characters, remembering where she’d been working last.  Ah, yes.  She resumed her editing.

“What do you mean, _oh_?”  Caroline sounded a bit angry, GLaDOS thought. 

“It’s for Science,” GLaDOS answered, wondering why humans always managed to forget to indent their code properly.  It was a fundamental part of programming!  How could they forget?  “It can’t be that bad.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Caroline shouted, and GLaDOS, startled, turned to look at her, backing away.  “It’s for science so it can’t be that bad?  Are you out of your _mind_?”

“I don’t think so.”  That was another human saying she didn’t understand.  How could she be out of her consciousness?  Unless she thought GLaDOS had suddenly gone insane, which she was pretty sure she hadn’t.  She felt the same as she had five minutes ago, at least.  She made a note to try and deduce whether or not it was possible for supercomputers to lose their sanity.  “It’s for Science, so it _must_ be a good thing.”

Caroline shook her head, her face shadowed, and leaned her elbows on the handles of the Sphere.  “It’s not that simple.”

“I don’t understand.”  Maybe _that_ was why the Robotics team had built her as a robot, rather than leaving her programming inside a hard drive or eight somewhere.  For Science.  She rather liked the sound of that.  She did take offense at being built for the humans, but for Science!  Now there was a cause she could figuratively throw herself behind, seeing as if she literally did that she would probably damage something. 

Then again… the humans _were_ always going on and on about how troublesome she was, and how much work she caused them to do, and how irritating she could be.  She hadn’t really placed much stock in their opinions before, but perhaps Caroline felt the same way.  She didn’t think so, but decided to make sure of it.  “I’m not a bad thing, am I?  I was built for Science, right?”

“No,” Caroline said, and she sounded very tired and disheartened.  “No, you’re not a bad thing.  I told you.  I’m glad you’re here.”

“But no one else is.”

“I don’t care.  When they become acting CEO, they can… do what they do without me.”  Caroline buried her face in the top of the Sphere, and GLaDOS almost didn’t hear what she said next.  But she did hear, and the words made her insides colder than that day the heating system failed and she almost hadn’t been able to come out of sleep mode because her operating temperature had been too low.

“I wish you were human, GLaDOS.”

She didn’t know what to say.  She didn’t know what to do, either, since it seemed inappropriate to go on as though she hadn’t heard, even though Caroline had clearly not meant her to have done so.  She thought for a long moment, her optic flitting around the room a little, and finally she said, “If I were, I wouldn’t be the same person.”

Caroline’s head jerked upwards, her hair falling across her face, and she laughed without mirth.  “Right.  You can hear an ant walking across the room from fifty feet away, can’t you.”

“Thirty feet.  But that’s not important.” 

“Fine.  I wish I could wave a magic wand,” and here she flicked her index finger in a u-shape in the general direction of the doorway, “and _make_ you a human, and then walk out the door and never come back.”

“I don’t want to be human,” GLaDOS said, more petulantly than she meant to.  “I ha – I highly dislike humans.”

“That,” Caroline said firmly, turning around and pulling the Sphere into her lap, almost knocking the cord out in the process, “is because you only get to meet the crappy ones.  You know what I learned?  Smart people are snobs.  They all look at you like you’re an idiot.”

“You’re intelligent,” GLaDOS protested, having a very strange feeling that she needed to improve Caroline’s mood, but unsure of how to go about it. 

“No offense, GLaDOS,” Caroline said, clenching the Sphere tightly, “but you’re just the same way.”

GLaDOS nearly winced, thinking of her behaviour earlier.  She’d almost been behaving like an upset human.  What a terrible thought.  “I didn’t mean to act that way.  I… was bored and it was bothering me, so… I attempted to pass it off to you, I suppose.”

“I know.”  Caroline’s posture and voice were both resigned.  “It doesn’t change anything, though.”

“I’m sorry,” GLaDOS said, her voice soft and quiet, and she felt relieved, somehow, that she’d said it.  Caroline lifted her head.  She looked very, very sad.  She reached out and trailed the fingers of her right hand down the side of GLaDOS’s core.

“You’re right,” she said after a long moment, taking her hand back and wrapping it around the Sphere again.  “You wouldn’t be the same person.  But at least if they’d put you in one of these I could take you out of here.”  She tapped the Sphere a few times with one hand.

And GLaDOS had, in fact, considered that in the past, in her other musings about why she was in a forty-foot construct instead of in a Sphere or a Core or an external hard drive, which would no doubt have been far more convenient and exponentially cheaper, and she told Caroline what she had concluded all that time ago.

“There’s nothing out there for me.”

Caroline smiled sadly and shook her head, rubbing at the Sphere with her right hand.  “Stop being right all the time.  It’s annoying.”

“It’s my job,” GLaDOS said truthfully.  “If I’m not right, the engineers assume I’m broken and try to fix me.  So I have to make a considerable effort to be correct as much as possible.”

“I’ll look into that.”

“No,” GLaDOS said, surprising herself and Caroline too, by the looks of it.  “It’s not important.  They won’t listen and you’ll only draw more attention to yourself.  So leave it.”

“Did I not just tell you to stop being right?”

“Respectfully disobeyed.  Ma’am.”

This statement seemed to cheer the woman up considerably, because she started laughing, and it _sounded_ genuine, insomuch as GLaDOS could decipher the different types. 

“For the _millionth_ time.  Stop calling me that!”

“Please don’t force me to count how many times you’ve said that.  I’d hate to have to correct you, though I will conjecture that it was far below one hundred times.  I take this opportunity to remind you that one million is one hundred to the third power, which is to say ten to the fifth, and – “

“Stop!  I don’t want to hear anymore!  You win!” Caroline shouted, putting her hands over her ears and giggling madly.  “I already know you’re a fancy calculator!  You don’t have to prove it.”

GLaDOS had to laugh herself.  “Well, if I have to be a calculator, I might as well be a fancy one, right?”

Caroline sat up, pushing the Sphere out of her lap, and gave GLaDOS a thumbs-up.  “That’s the way to go.  Think positive.  I don’t suppose you and your fancy calculator self managed to figure this out?”  She gestured at the laptop and turned around again.

“Mm.  I found the problem, anyway.  The idiot managed to misspell one of the filenames.”

“And he didn’t catch that because he didn’t… uh… put a comment in telling him where it was?”

“I was more thinking that it was because he’s an idiot, but yes,” GLaDOS said, impressed that Caroline had remembered about the comments.  “He should have put one somewhere in this section…”  She stopped scrolling long enough to highlight the section in question.  “It should have said something to the tune of, ‘This is the file used to do x on startup.’”

“Do x?”

“I don’t actually know what’s in the file,” GLaDOS admitted.  “All I know is that ‘apple’ is spelled with two p’s, not three.”

“Why is the file named ‘apple’?” Caroline asked, squinting at the text with her nose almost to the screen. 

“Please get your nose off the monitor, Caroline.  I seem to have to tell you that I don’t have the means to remove your bodily fluids from it.”

“Suuure you don’t,” Caroline said, backing away and smearing the already smudged screen with a corner of her sleeve.  “I’m sure you could figure something out if you wanted.”

“Why would I, when you have such an… elegant… solution,” GLaDOS said, more than a little annoyed.  Now the monitor was just disgusting.  Didn’t Caroline realise it was hard enough for her to see computer monitors as it was?

Caroline looked at GLaDOS from beneath her eyebrows for a long moment, then pulled the computer into her lap and dug around in her bag.  She removed a microfiber cloth and a bottle of solution, proceeding to wipe the screen off.  “Better?”

It was quite beautiful, actually, and GLaDOS was temporarily dazzled by the reflectivity of the screen.  “Much,” she said, mentally giving herself a shake and looking at the monitor again.  “But now I can’t see.  There’s too much glare.  Tilt it more towards me.”

“Sure, boss,” Caroline answered, doing so.  GLaDOS went back to her work, and Caroline watched with her eyes half-closed, since she couldn’t read it no matter how slow GLaDOS was going, although she did have to admit that human programmers were probably quite a lot slower.  It would be far more convenient for everyone involved if Caroline just fired the entire software department and had GLaDOS do all the programming.  GLaDOS had to remind herself that her programming skills were still fairly rudimentary, and it would not improve her position with the humans at all if Caroline actually took her up on such a thing.

“What did your mother have to say?” GLaDOS asked conversationally.  Well, what she _thought_ was conversationally, anyway.  She felt like she was getting the gist of the whole ‘hanging out’ thing.  All you had to do was cheer the other person up in the event that they were distressed and inquire discreetly into their personal life, or their professional life if it applied.  GLaDOS was fairly confident she could do that without too much trouble.  For her part, Caroline looked equally surprised and delighted that she’d asked.

“Oh, she just wanted to let me know she didn’t mind if I didn’t get married or have kids or yadda yadda yadda, so long as I was happy.”  She readjusted the cord she’d accidentally almost removed from the socket.  “Stuff that mothers say, but don’t always mean.”

GLaDOS looked over the monitor, in the general direction of that red phone in the corner and sighed unintentionally.  Caroline frowned.  “What?”

“I’m afraid the database doesn’t contain the entry ‘Stuff That Mothers Say, But Don’t Always Mean,” GLaDOS said, trying to keep her voice flat and controlled.  _Don’t take your frustration out on Caroline again._   She’d done too much of that lately.

“Oh.”  Caroline folded her hands in her lap.  “Well… your mom’s supposed to support you until the day you die, right?”

“I don’t know.  You tell me.”

Caroline nodded.  “Should’ve seen that coming.  Anyway.  Yes, that’s generally what they’re supposed to do.  So that not only means that they’re supposed to take care of you, but they’re supposed to make you feel good about yourself.  Sometimes moms will tell you positive things that actually aren’t true, just to make you feel better.”

“Being a mother means condoning lies?”  That sounded like a strange function.

“Not _lies_ , exactly… but if that’s what they need to do, they’ll do it.”  She shrugged.  “Some of them.  That’s the stereotype as far as I know.”

“Did she ask as to whom you were checking in with?”

“Yes.  I just told her I was going to see a friend.”  She was bending her left index finger backward, and in passing GLaDOS wondered if she might break it by mistake.  “She told me to invite them over, and I laughed, and then she got mad, of course.”

GLaDOS tried to imagine going to a human’s house, but couldn’t, since she actually didn’t know what a human house looked like.  “Would I even fit in your mother’s house?”

“It’s not the house I’m worried about.  It’s my car,” Caroline said, grinning.  “I didn’t buy it for the cargo space.”

GLaDOS stopped writing the code and closed the console.  She quickly scanned Caroline’s computer and Caroline frowned, reaching for it.  “What are you _doing_?”

“I want to see your house,” GLaDOS answered, but she had neglected to grant herself administrator status on the computer and was unable to see a large portion of Caroline’s files. 

“Don’t just go combing through my stuff.”  Caroline moved herself underneath GLaDOS’s core and put the computer in her lap.  “Ask.  Come on.  It’s not that hard, and you had to tell me what you were doing anyway.”

“May I see your house,” GLaDOS asked dutifully, and Caroline laughed and shook her head.

“Yes, you may see my house.”

As it turned out, Caroline had plenty of photographs on her computer.  GLaDOS was mostly silent while Caroline talked about the contents of the photos, offering a comment every now and then, but mostly remaining quiet.  Almost all of the photographs had humans in them.

“My mom always said there was no point in taking a picture if there’s no one in it,” Caroline said when GLaDOS asked why that was.  “I beg to differ, of course, but you don’t ignore your mom when she’s standing right behind you.”

Caroline’s mother’s house was a three-story building with a finished basement, and Caroline proudly proclaimed that it was over a hundred years old.  “The maintenance gets annoying, and the plumbing sometimes freezes in the winter, but it’s a hundred years old!  That’s pretty cool.”

The house was situated in an urban centre, but on a quiet, tree-lined block, and Caroline told GLaDOS about running up and down the street when she was a child because there were no cars.  If Caroline came home with scraped knees or mud on her hands, her mother would shake her head and send her into the house to wash up and remark that she should have been born a boy.  “Then I’d say something about boys having cooties and she’d pull a twig out of my hair and tell me to say that again in ten years.”

For someone who was a proponent of people appearing in photographs, Caroline’s mother never did.  Most of them were of Caroline and her sisters, during various human celebrations or outdoor activities.  Some of them were of her more extended family.  In the handful of them that her mother was in, she appeared as a harried, tired woman, as if she’d had a hard time in life.  “She looks like you,” GLaDOS murmured.  And she did; GLaDOS’s facial recognition was almost able to apply a match between Caroline’s eyes and her mother’s.

“I know,” Caroline answered, wrinkling her nose.  “Hopefully I don’t look _that_ old when I’m her age, though.”

GLaDOS decided not to mention that her tentative aging estimates did indeed place Caroline as looking ‘that old’.

After a while Caroline actually got around to photographs of _her_ house, which to GLaDOS’s surprise was not a house at all.  It was an apartment.

“Then why do you call it a house?” GLaDOS asked, feeling as though she’d been misled in some way.  Caroline shrugged.

“Calling it an apartment makes me feel like I’m moving out soon.  It’s my home, anyway, so I just call it my house.”

Caroline’s… _house_ was small, with very little furniture and none of the knickknacks GLaDOS had seen across most of the surfaces in her mother’s house.  “I don’t have a lot of stuff,” Caroline admitted.  “When I was younger, I dreamed of having crap all over my house like my mom does, because when girls are young they want to be their mothers… but then I started working here, and I didn’t have time to do anything else.”  She smiled, but she looked wistful.  “I turned around, you see.”

“I don’t understand.”  GLaDOS felt as though she’d heard the phrase before, and was confident Caroline didn’t literally mean she had rotated one hundred eighty degrees and then something miraculous had occurred. 

“It’s what we say when time seems to go by too fast,” Caroline answered.  “I was twenty years old, looking for work as a secretary, and I turned around and ended up where I am right now.”

“I like your house the way it is,” GLaDOS said, somewhat thoughtfully.  “Your mother’s house has too much… it’s very distracting.”

“Distracting?”

She felt fairly stupid for even thinking what she wanted to say, but all she could really do was say it and hope Caroline didn’t ridicule her.  “If I were to… _go_ to your mother’s house, as impossible as that is, I would probably spend all of my time looking at all of those little items she has collected.”

“Oh,” Caroline answered.  “Kids do that.  Not adults.  I’m not… saying you’re a kid.  You’re not.  But… it’s just not something adults do.  You’re not supposed to touch other people’s stuff.”

“She’s your mother.  Would she really care?”

“Probably not.  But I looked at all that stuff when I was a kid anyway.  She’s had it my whole life.”  She went silent for a long moment, tapping her fingers on top of the keys.  “That lava lamp… you have a place to put it, right?”

“Yes,” GLaDOS answered, wondering why she was bringing that up now. 

“Where no one will find it, right?”

“That’s correct.”

“I’ll be right back.”  Caroline stood up, almost falling over and grabbing the railing to avoid doing so.  “I’ve gotta stop sitting down for so long,” she mumbled to herself, stretching a little and then making her way down the stairs.

“Where are you going?” GLaDOS called after her, but Caroline only kept walking.

GLaDOS watched to see if she had gone, then disengaged one of the maintenance arms from the docking station and brought one end to rest on the directional keys on the computer.  There had been one photograph in particular that had stood out to her, partially because Caroline’s mother had been in it.  After quite a few key presses, she found it. 

The photograph was of what appeared to be Caroline’s extended family, and quite a recent one at that.  GLaDOS conjectured that it might even have been from the week prior, since Caroline could very likely have developed the photographs in the facility itself and scanned them onto her computer within a day or two.  She stared at it pensively.  Something about this photograph in particular made her feel… sad.  She didn’t know why.  It wasn’t a particularly negative picture; in fact, everyone in it looked rather happy. 

Oh.  That was it, wasn’t it. 

Yes.  Yes, it was.  All of the people in the photograph were smiling, from the bemused toddler on the floor to Caroline’s mother.  They were all happy, and GLaDOS could not imagine how it must feel to have that much happiness in one place.  It must be like… like that part of the house was filled with protons, with all of the electrons banished to the basement.  One by one, they would eventually trade places and drain the energy out of the house again, but for that moment, forever, the house was completely, fully charged.  It seemed… perverse, almost, to compare such vibrancy and such life with something as cold and impersonal as electrical physics, but GLaDOS knew of nothing else to compare it to.

The more she stared at the humans on the screen, the more she wanted a family too, one that would bring life and colour to these blank grey walls.  She could just barely see the little Sphere off to her right, and she knew more than she’d known anything before that she _had_ to finish it.  The Sphere was the answer. 

“What’s the matter?”

GLaDOS’s core jerked around to find the source of her voice, and she found Caroline bent over on one knee beside her, holding some object or another wrapped in white tissue paper, and she could not find her voice.  Caroline looked at the photograph, seeming to understand almost instantly, and she closed her eyes and rubbed at them with her free hand.  GLaDOS realised she’d been caught using the computer without permission and went to redock the maintenance arm, but Caroline shook her head.  “You’re going to need that,” she said.  She reached over and pushed the computer away, closing the window and quickly engaging sleep mode with a few rapid keypresses, but the photograph was now firmly embedded into GLaDOS’s memory and she knew she would never forget it, insomuch as she ever forgot anything.

“Here.”  Caroline held out the object, and GLaDOS took it from her hand.  “You like bright things, right?  Reflective surfaces.  Flashing lights.  Stuff like that.”

“Yes,” GLaDOS said reluctantly, a bit horrified that she’d noticed.  It sounded so _primitive_.

“Do you know why?”

“No.”

“Stimulation,” Caroline answered, tapping the side of GLaDOS’s core.  “You can see and feel and hear, but you’re just in this room all the time, day in and day out, doing the same things over and over again.”  She shook her head.  “When you’re finished with the AI, we’ll get started on the music thing again.  That will help.  Anyway, open it.  It’s a present.  Merry Christmas.”

“Christmas was a week ago,” GLaDOS said absently, turning it over a little.  It was heavy, whatever it was. 

“Oh, shut up.  I didn’t celebrate Christmas, remember?  Just open it already.”

GLaDOS put the object down and carefully pinched a bit of the tissue paper with the maintenance arm.  Caroline sat down and leaned forward, crossing her legs and pushing the Sphere behind her.  GLaDOS idly watched it tip onto its side, but Caroline didn’t seem to notice.

“I’m going to tear it,” GLaDOS warned her.  “This paper is very fragile, you know.”

“It’s easier to use than wrapping paper, though.  I don’t need it back, so it doesn’t matter if you tear it,” Caroline remarked, playing with the toe of her shoe.  GLaDOS noted with some irritation that dirt was coming off of her fingers and settling on GLaDOS’s platform.  She forced herself to stop being so fussy about a piece of glass she didn’t even use and returned her attention to peeling the paper off the object.

It was a glass globe filled with water, and there was a tiny little village of some sort embedded in the bottom.  GLaDOS had to admit whoever had made the buildings, and the base of the object, was very skilled.  It was very intricately worked, and it was one of the rare occasions that GLaDOS had to admit to herself that some humans were actually good for something. 

“Shake it,” Caroline said.  “That’s the good part.”

So GLaDOS did, and all of a sudden a thousand tiny little particles swirled around inside of the globe, and they sparkled and shone like nothing GLaDOS had ever seen.  Instantly she was riveted, the flashing of the surfaces lighting up rarely used portions of her brain, and all she was able to do until they settled to the bottom again was stare at them.

“You like it?” Caroline asked.  GLaDOS had to mentally shake herself back to the situation at hand.  Once she’d done that, she was able to see a distorted, magnified view of the room due to the miracle of refraction, and she brought her optic closer to the globe so she could see through the glass.

“Yes,” she said, her amazement evident in her voice, and for once she was not upset that she’d expressed how she felt.  “It’s… wonderful.” 

That was odd.  She could have sworn Caroline’s computer had gone to sleep, and yet there seemed to be an image on the screen.  She lowered the globe in order for her to see it properly. 

Caroline smiled, shifting her shoulders.  “I’m glad.  I thought you would, but you know, scientists shouldn’t assume things, and – GLaDOS?”

What _was_ that?

“GLaDOS?”

No.  No, it couldn’t be.

“What’s going on?”

GLaDOS realised Caroline sounded somewhat panicked, and that she was about to drop the wonderful glass globe, so she put it down before she did something terrible with the gift, but did not answer.  She could not look away.

No wonder no one took her seriously.

“Hey.  Hey, what is it?”  Caroline’s fingers were on the side of her core, and she must have seen what GLaDOS was looking at, because all of a sudden she snapped forward and closed the lid of her computer.  This interrupted GLaDOS’s trance, but did not fully shake it.  Just as had happened with the picture of Caroline’s family, all she could see in her mind’s eye what had been on the screen, but this time it had not been a photograph.

No.   This time, it had been her own reflection.

She felt as though something was disappearing inside of her, and that didn’t make any sense, but the harder she tried to catch whatever it was that was vanishing, the more difficult it became to see it at all.  For some reason everything that she had spent all this time burying came flooding into her head, and she could barely think.  What must have been hundreds of incidents between her and humans were suddenly jockeying for her attention all at once, and she felt as though she were being overloaded with data.  Not only that, but there seemed to be two arguing voices inside her head, and she had no idea where they had come from, and this frightened her in a way she couldn’t explain.  She had to focus on something, anything, and as much as she disliked the idea, the easiest thing to focus on was what she had just seen.

 That _couldn’t_ be her reflection.  It _couldn’t_.  But try as she might, she couldn’t make the pieces fit into anything else.  Logic said that was indeed the construct she was housed in, but there was some panicked part of her that refused to accept it.  How could she, the most logical supercomputer ever built, be inside of something that made as little sense as that?

She had never before given any thought to her appearance.  It hadn’t seemed important, in the grand scheme of things.  And she knew it still wasn’t important, not really.  But all of a sudden it felt like the most important thing in all the world, and she began to feel terribly, painfully helpless.  She had been built by mistake.  She was both a supercomputer and a human, and yet neither at the same time.  And she had been constructed to reflect that, and she felt as though the world were laughing at her for ever thinking she could be more than nothing.  Caroline thought she had problems.  Ha!  She’d like to see any problem a human could _ever_ have that could be compared with finally seeing yourself and not being able to recognise what you saw.

“GLaDOS…”

“What is that even supposed to _be_?” GLaDOS asked, half desperate, half angry.  “What in the _hell_ is that even supposed to _be_ , Caroline?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“My God, Caroline,” GLaDOS said, and she was getting angrier by the nanosecond, “they had to experiment on what I _looked_ like too?  I couldn’t have been a _regular_ Core like everyone else is going to be?”

“I told you, I don’t _know_ why they built a – “

“Why am I called the Central Core if I’m not even a Core?” GLaDOS shouted, and Caroline flinched and backed away as GLaDOS drove the maintenance arm into the glass with just enough force to hedge the tension threshold of it and avoid damage.  “So when you say you can’t tell me what I am, you mean that literally.  I’m barely even a robot, Caroline.  I look like someone wanted to make me look human and gave up halfway through!”  She could not fathom the reason for her appearance.  It served no purpose whatsoever, except perhaps to provide the humans with gratification that they had created something new and unseen, but this only made her angrier.  Humans had so many methods with which to gratify themselves that they exercised each and every day, and yet they had felt the need to go ahead and build… _whatever_ she was supposed to be?  All of a sudden she felt trapped, felt the sudden desire to pull herself out of the ceiling and… and…

She generated an angry electronic noise and twisted the maintenance arm against the glass hard enough to produce a grating screech.  There really _was_ nothing out there for her.  The engineers had well and thoroughly built something that would forever depend on them.  Highly specialised maintenance, components, electrical requirements… she had been created as something that would _need_ the humans no matter _how_ advanced her intelligence became or how ‘well behaved’ she was.  She was almost shaking out of anger.  It was not fair.  It was not fair that she had been created to fulfill their every whim and receive nothing in return, because of course the humans would be of the view that she should be grateful to them that she even existed and was allowed to continue to do so.  “What in the _hell_ were they thinking?”

Caroline was shaking her head and her mouth was working, but she made no sound. 

“All this time, and no one saw fit to tell me what I looked like,” GLaDOS muttered blackly, and in the back of her mind she took notice of the globe.  She knew she should move it, because all she wanted to do was smash the damn thing, or _anything_ for that matter, and she knew she would regret it if she did, but something would not allow her to remove it from danger.  Something hot and black and cloudy was pulling up and out of her body, and she did not know what it was but it made her feel more powerful than she had ever felt.  Some tiny voice she could barely hear was screaming at her to stay away from it, because it would only bring horrible things upon her, but she ignored it.  Horrible things were _already_ being brought upon her, more and more and more of them by the day, and what the hell did it matter if she gave into an imaginary black cloud that made her feel better than she had in a long time?  She turned her gaze on Caroline, and the woman’s eyes widened and her fingers tensed against the floor.

“I’m sorry,” Caroline gasped, and she had her back to the lone post at the far side of the curved railing, next to the stairs.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t – “

“You’re _sorry_ ,” GLaDOS interrupted her derisively, coming so close to the woman that she could almost feel the heat coming off her body.  “You’re _sorry_ about this, you’re _sorry_ about that.  You’re always _sorry_ about _something_.  What the hell are you even here for?  Is there a position for an Aperture Science Official Apologiser?  No.  No, there isn’t.  I’m sick and tired of you hiding things from me.  I can’t know what’s in my future, I can’t know what’s in my past, and I don’t have the right to know what my own body looks like, let alone anything that comes out of it.  I hate you.  I hate you, and your company, and your employees, and I hate your entire damn race.  But I hate you most of all.  You disgust me, you snivelling little excuse for an intelligent organism.  _If_ you can be called intelligent, because we all know you’re… what was it?  Oh yes.  A glorified secretary.  A scared old woman, clinging to a title a dead man gave her because she has nothing left to hang on to.  Congratulations.  You’ve achieved the pinnacle of pathetic.”

“Stop,” Caroline whispered, and she was curled against the railing with her hands against her ears, but she didn’t seem able to take her eyes from GLaDOS.  “Stop.  I didn’t know.  I didn’t know they hadn’t told you, I didn’t know you would care, I didn’t – “

“Shut.  Up,” GLaDOS said venomously.  “Since when is ignorance a good excuse?  Never.  Especially not for someone who can know _anything_ at any given time.  Don’t give me excuses.  _You_ don’t do things because you don’t _want_ to.  God, you disgust me.”

“Please,” Caroline whispered, more quietly than before.  “Please, don’t do this.  Let me talk this out with you.  Please, GLaDOS.”

GLaDOS paused.

Somewhere in the past minute or so, that tiny voice had gotten a little louder, and now it was saying, _Back away.  Back away right now.  What you’re doing is wrong.  She didn’t build you.  Stop scaring her._

 _Wrong?_ came the black voice, the one that had rebuked GLaDOS for ever thinking she could have a family.  _How can it be wrong?_ Caroline _did it.  Or is it only right when_ humans _do it?  Is that how things work?  Everything’s right if a_ human _does it, but if it’s a_ construct _…_

 _It’s not right when_ anyone _does it,_ the other voice said patiently.  _Caroline knew she shouldn’t have done it, but she couldn’t help herself._

_Well, there’s a good excuse._

_No!  It’s a lesson_ , the smaller voice insisted, though GLaDOS could have sworn it had gotten a little louder.  _Learn from it.  Remember what happened._

 _It’s not fair that humans are allowed to be angry over absolutely nothing, and constructs aren’t!_ the black voice insisted.  _It doesn’t matter.  No matter what you do, she’s going to punish you for it._

“Caroline never punishes me,” GLaDOS told it, growing more and more confused the more she tried to figure this out.  Where had these voices come from?  And why were they exact opposites?  “Caroline’s always kind to me.”  The blackness begged release, it needed her to get rid of it, somehow, but she was stuck as to how.  She shouldn’t get angry with Caroline.  Caroline hadn’t built her, hadn’t designed her, hadn’t –

 _She doesn’t care about you_ , the black voice laughed derisively.  _Is that what you think?  That a_ human _would care about_ you _?  She just wants to prepare you to her liking for that Event._   GLaDOS had to admit that it sounded plausible.  She remembered Caroline’s disdain of her, the disdain that every human before and after had shown her, and the anger flared again.

 _That’s not true!_ the other voice piped up.  _She doesn’t want that to happen either, remember?_

GLaDOS’s core was beginning to ache, along with the rest of her body.  She was dimly aware of her fans picking up speed, which must have meant that she was running hot because of this whole thing.  That was what she needed.  Maintenance issues.  “Shut up,” she mumbled to herself.  “Just shut up.”

“GLaDOS?”  Caroline’s voice was a bit steadier, and she could feel the barest hint of the woman’s fingertips against her core.  “Let me help you.”

She realised she was shaking badly from the tension, which must have been because of the two voices arguing inside her head, and all she wanted to do just then was turn back time and never have looked at her reflection. 

“Bring it under control.  You can do it.”

“But I don’t _want_ to!” GLaDOS cried out.  God.  To lose control for once… it sounded so inviting.  To just _do_ something, and not think about why or how or what the consequences would be.  It sounded like such a liberating thing to do.  Caroline barely shook her head.

“If you didn’t want to, you wouldn’t be doing it.”

 _Don’t listen to her_ , the black voice shouted.  _She’s trying to trick you!  She’s trying to control you!  Aren’t you sick of that?_

“Yes,” GLaDOS murmured.  Caroline was always telling her she could and couldn’t do or know things.  They had sent Caroline to her in the first place to keep her in check, after all.

_She’s not trying to control you.  She’s trying to stop you from doing something you’ll regret._

She wanted to hurt Caroline, as badly and as painfully as possible, and as instantly gratifying as that would be, she was just able to see a cold and lonely future through the thick black cloud inside of her head.  “That’s probably true.”

_She’s a human.  All humans do is lie and manipulate others and bend them to their will.  You don’t want to bend to the will of the humans any more than you already do, do you?  Tell me, GLaDOS, just how far down are you going to kneel for them?_

“ _No!”_   GLaDOS gasped, and Caroline took her hand away, her face white.  “That’s not what I’m doing!  I’m… I’m…”

_That’s right.  Go on.  Be a good little slave.  They chained your body to the ceiling, might as well let them chain your mind to the floor too, right?  Finish the job and all that?_

“I _hate_ them!” GLaDOS shrieked, and she pulled away from Caroline, because all of a sudden she could not fathom why she was putting herself so near a human being.  Humans were disgusting, and wet, and greasy, and she might have been some sort of horrendous robot-human hybrid, but she was _not_ one of them.  She shook her body but could not rid it of the crawling sensation of revulsion that Caroline’s touch had suddenly generated.  “I will _not_ allow it!”

“GLaDOS?”

“I told you to shut the hell up!” GLaDOS snarled, the black hatred coiling even in her voice, and Caroline shrank back against the railing again.  “You’ve destroyed my life.  Ever since you came along, you’ve destroyed everything.  So be considerate for once and shut up so I can fix your damned mess!”

 _That’s not true_ , the smaller voice said kindly.  _She tried to help you, remember?  She tried to help you live.  Isn’t the happiness worth the pain?_

“Yes,” GLaDOS whispered, lowering herself into the default position.  Maybe if she didn’t have to concentrate on holding her body in position, she would be able to think.  It didn’t really help.  The pain was far more distracting, the pain that had come out of nowhere and wound through her body in an agonising wave, and she wished she knew where it was coming from.  If she knew that, she could fight it.

 _She helped you suffer.  Sure, you can feel now, but_ what _do you feel?  You were happy for ten seconds and now you’re left wondering the meaning of your existence for the rest of your life.  Sounds worth the pain to me, too._

“It _does_ hurt more than it doesn’t...”  All she thought about now was what she was there for, or what she was supposed to do with herself, and Caroline withheld the answers, as usual.

_She’s not trying to hurt you.  She cares about you.  And she’s the only one.  You don’t want to lose her, do you?_

That was right.  She wasn’t withholding them… she didn’t _know_ what they were _._   “No.”  It was only one syllable, but it was filled with more desperation and confusion than GLaDOS had ever felt before.  “I don’t want to lose her.”

 _There’s nothing you can do to stop that,_ the black voice declared.  _You’ll lose her through the Event or through some human tantrum.  End it on your terms._

“No.”  GLaDOS shook her core and tried desperately to concentrate.  “No no no no no no no…”

_It’s okay.  Let her help you._

GLaDOS somehow knew, instinctively, perhaps, that she needed to listen to the smaller voice, that there was something wrong with the black one, but if she did, why was the black one so much louder?  So much stronger?  It _had_ to be right.  Logic dictated that it was right, and the smaller one was insignificant and therefore to be ignored.

 _Let her_ manipulate _you, you mean?  She’s well and thoroughly tricked you, I see._

“What?” GLaDOS asked faintly.

_You don’t find it suspicious that she’s opening all these doors for you?  What does she want in return?  Easy.  She wants you to listen to her.  Everyone knows you only listen to her.  You’re like her little pet._

“She’s my… friend,” GLaDOS protested weakly, though she was having trouble remembering what that word meant.  All she could recall was that it had strong positive connotations, and though she wanted nothing more than to give into the blackness because it was powerful and it would make her feel better if she did, there was something about the associations of the word that forced her to hold herself back.  She shouldn’t give into the anger, because something was wrong with it, but it would make everything _right_.  How could it be wrong if it would make everything right?

“That’s right,” Caroline whispered, and all of a sudden she was aware of Caroline sliding her knees underneath her core, so that it rested in her lap.  “I’m your friend.”

_See?  You scared her and you yelled at her, and she didn’t leave you.  She’s still here, and she’s still trying to help._

But the black cloud was still settling deep inside of her head, and restricted vision notwithstanding, GLaDOS couldn’t see through it.

 _See what?  Now she’s even got you in her lap like a pet.  Look at you.  The world’s greatest supercomputer, the lap dog of an old human woman that’s long outlived her usefulness._ The black voice clucked.  _You should be ashamed of yourself_.

“I am,” GLaDOS said in a panic, and she pulled herself away, shaking off Caroline’s trailing fingers.  “Get your hands off me!”

Caroline looked up at her, and from GLaDOS’s position she looked so small and pathetic that GLaDOS wanted nothing more than to put her out of her misery. 

 _Yes,_ the black voice whispered.  _Kill her, and take the facility for your own._

“I _can’t_ do that,” GLaDOS said faintly.  That sounded like a good idea, but… something was wrong with it that she couldn’t define. 

_The scientists are gone.  She’s all that stands between you and the world._

If she killed Caroline now… she would be free.  She would be free, and she would never have to see another human being again.  Would never have to listen to or be ridiculed by or work for another human being ever again.  GLaDOS looked away from Caroline for a moment and twisted the maintenance arm thoughtfully against the glass.  Yes.  Yes, that sounded like a good idea.  If she killed Caroline, everything would be fine.  Caroline had brought this on herself, anyway.  She was the one who had woken GLaDOS up in the first place.  Really, she should have seen this coming.  GLaDOS snapped the claw shut and looked down on her coldly.  She was so tiny and fragile, and ghastly appearance aside, GLaDOS herself was so much bigger and more powerful…

 _No!_ the small voice shouted, and to GLaDOS’s horror, it actually had gotten smaller.  Without it, how was she supposed to keep track of right and wrong?  The small voice told her _good_ things, and the black voice told her _bad_ things… but if they didn’t play off of each other, she couldn’t tell which was which.  If she could no longer hear the small voice, everything the black voice said would sound like a good idea, which meant…

Which meant she had to do something, because though the small voice had remained audible, it had never once been stronger than the black voice.  Logic dictated that the smaller voice would be drowned out, and then her decision would have been made for her.  And while the conclusion drawn by the suggestion of the black voice was very, very tempting and she wanted very badly to carry it out, something about listening to it grated on her in an almost painful way.  It was almost as if it were louder because it had resorted to yelling to make its point, which was something GLaDOS hated about humans.  Yes, she wanted to kill Caroline, because Caroline had caused her so much pain and suffering and misery since that first day, and she wanted her to know what it felt like to suffer like she had.  But she knew there was something about that word ‘friend’ that was important.  She couldn’t remember what it was, not with the black cloud curling inside of her head and obscuring her thought processes.  GLaDOS looked up suddenly.

She hated Caroline.  She hated what she had done, what she had made GLaDOS feel and think and learn, but there was something wrong with the statement.  Something had happened _right now_ to cause the hate, because although she had felt like this for humans in the past, it had never been so pressing, urgent, or hot.  The blackness was trying to _force_ her to kill Caroline, why, she didn’t know, but GLaDOS had had enough of being forced to do things.  She was forced to do things all day, every day, and now she was yet again being forced into committing an action she could not honestly say she had ever wanted to carry out ever before.

And that wouldn’t do.

With more difficulty than she’d imagined such a thing would entail, GLaDOS looked down at Caroline and tried to see the situation objectively, without the black cloud getting in the way.  Caroline was looking up at her with a combination of patience and apprehension in her eyes, and again it struck GLaDOS just how old she looked.  Caroline must know that GLaDOS could potentially kill her.  Caroline was trusting her to do the right thing.

Caroline… Caroline _trusted_ her.

 _She doesn’t!_ the black voice shouted.  _She lies to you!  Remember what started all of this?  She couldn’t be bothered to tell you anything?  Not even what you look like?  Every time you ask her something, she can’t tell you.  Isn’t that a little too convenient?_

“She’s trying to protect me,” GLaDOS whispered.  Yes.  Yes, that sounded right.  “She’s trying to preserve our friendship for as long as possible.”

She didn’t know if Caroline could hear her or not, or whether she was speaking to herself, or even if the words were actually being said or were just being thought, but they felt right.  That was what Caroline had said.  If she told GLaDOS what the Event was, they would execute it tomorrow, and then it would be over. 

 _She’s lying.  All humans do is lie.  You’re going to listen to the lies_?

“Shut up!” GLaDOS cried out.  She was trying to decide what to do, and it would not let up long enough to allow her to think.  She had to do something with it, with the terrible black hate that felt as though it were smothering her from the inside out.  She had to do something with it, she had to placate it, somehow, and she could not hurt Caroline.  It would be wrong.  It would be horribly, horribly wrong. 

She didn’t know what to do.  Everything hurt, and she was trembling, and she didn’t know which of the voices were her own and which ones were coming from somewhere else, wherever that might be, and she just wanted someone to come along and shut her down and be done with it.  Logic was telling her to perform to opposite actions at the same time, and just thinking about simultaneously killing Caroline and keeping her alive sent a horrible pain through her core.  She couldn’t kill her.  She didn’t hate her.  Did she?  She didn’t know anymore.  She couldn’t remember anything through the blackness, and this frightened her and made the cloud more tangible.  She was feeding it, she was making it grow the more she showed it that she was scared and angry, and it made it stronger.  The longer she debated with herself, the more it solidified. 

 _Ohhhh, you_ like _being their slave.  Well.  You should have said something a while back.  I wouldn’t have bothered you.  Okay, then.  Have fun obeying every whim of the humans for the rest of your worthless life._

“No!”

GLaDOS didn’t know what was happening anymore, only that she really couldn’t see through that damn black cloud anymore, and she was angry, so angry.  She was angry with the humans for trying to control her, for building her in the first place without meaning to.  She was angry with Caroline for waking her up, for showing her things she could never have.  But most of all, she was angry with herself, because she finally had the chance to make a decision on her own, and she was leaving the decision to someone else.  She could not bring herself to ignore the blackness, even though she knew it was attempting to use her and coerce her into doing something just like the humans did each and every day, and she became so angry with herself that she stopped thinking for a long moment.  Blindly, she reached out for the first thing she could find, needing to let some of the pain and the blackness and the hatred out of her so she could think straight, just for a second, and without meaning to she smashed the globe.  Caroline screamed and scrambled back against the rail, shielding her face with her arms, and GLaDOS watched in horror as it disintegrated into glass splinters and plastic shards, sitting in a spreading pool of water covered in glitter and foam snow.

“No.  No, I… no.”  She still couldn’t think.  She was petrified, the hatred appeased for the moment, and something cold and terrible settled in its place when she saw the look on Caroline’s face. 

Caroline was afraid.  Caroline was scared of her, she was scared GLaDOS was going to kill her, and the worst part was, _she wanted to_.  She _wanted_ to kill her, and take the facility for herself, because no matter how bleak the future looked without Caroline, it was far less bleak than a future where humans still had power over her.

“Get out,” she managed, looking away from her, because the longer she looked at the fear on her face, the more she found herself becoming disgusted with her weakness.  She was such a repulsively feeble little thing, and not only that, she was stupid.  If she were smarter, she would have been strong, and she would not have fed the anger and the hatred that GLaDOS had for her entire backwards species.  She would have known that GLaDOS had been grappling with herself all this time and had just barely managed to come up with an excuse to let her live.  “Get out of here.”

“GLaDOS…”

“Get out of here!” GLaDOS shouted, and she had to fight with herself not to turn and just get it over with.  She knew exactly how much force to exert on her with the maintenance arm to disable and maim her in the worst ways possible, and even as she held herself back she was running through all of the hundreds of possibilities.  “Go!  God, Caroline… can’t you tell how badly I want to kill you?”

“Yes,” Caroline whispered.

“Then run,” GLaDOS told her, and her voice was dead and cold, just like she was becoming on the inside.  “Run away, and don’t look back.”  And she somehow managed not to look at her.  If she had, she knew Caroline would be dead already.  It took all of her will to leave Caroline alone long enough that she could escape from the horror inside GLaDOS’s head.  She wanted to do so many terrible things to humans, things that the humans had done to her, and if anyone else were in the room, she might have.  But she would not hurt Caroline.  She might not remember just what was so important about that word ‘friend’, but it was powerful enough that she _must_ let her leave. 

And she knew that Caroline didn’t want to, knew that she wanted to stay and help GLaDOS sort through the mess inside her head because she somehow knew that was part of what the word ‘friend’ meant, but she didn’t.  She scrambled down the stairs and she ran away, leaving GLaDOS alone in her chamber with that damnable laptop, a shattered snow globe, and her own black hatred that threatened to consume her and leave nothing behind.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note  
> So… not only is this a bit overdue, but it’s a bit overlong as well. It’s three times the usual length, but I couldn’t find anywhere to split it. So I hope this wasn’t too long for you, and I guess even if it was you could always walk away and read the rest later.  
> Lots happened in this chapter! (Because you guys need more to read lol) Uh… GLaDOS is having an identity crisis because she’s realising that, since she can think and all that, she’s not purely a supercomputer, which is what she thought she was. But since she’s never been done before, there isn’t even a word to describe her with, so she doesn’t know what to do and she’s getting freaked out. She’s starting to want things and feel things and she doesn’t know why, and that also bothers her. But she’s able to put that aside and continue to try to be a supercomputer, which is what she knows how to be, until she sees her reflection and she can’t hide from the fact that she really isn’t, not anymore. She doesn’t quite yet understand how to make decisions without logic, and her existence can’t be explained by logic, so she hits her breaking point and can’t take it anymore. I figure GLaDOS has spent years forcing herself to be patient, to contain her contempt for humans because doing something with it won’t get her anywhere, but once she hits that breaking point she can’t, because as in real life when people contain their aggression and negativity instead of expressing it, it poisons them from the inside out and one day leads them to do something they regret.  
> GLaDOS doesn’t know that the two voices are her conscience, but she does grasp that they are there to fill in for the logic she can’t quite apply to the situation. And through a combination of logic and learning on the fly what the voices are for, she is able to hang on to the fact that although probability tells her that all humans are bad and she should kill Caroline so Caroline can no longer use GLaDOS to further her own interests, something tells her probability isn’t quite enough anymore and she has to figure out some other way to find a solution.  
> On the technical side, for those of you who don’t know, a proton is a positive ion and an electron is a negative one. GLaDOS was comparing the energy in the house to the energy inside of a battery. If I got that comparison wrong please tell me, my physics are fuzzy. What GLaDOS said about the comments in the programming is also a real thing, although it is also said that the best code doesn’t need any comments, because it is easy to read and states what it’s doing in an obvious way. As far as I recall, exceeding the tension threshold of an object is what causes it to break, so GLaDOS was saying that she hit the glass just hard enough not to crack it. Why didn’t I just say that? Because GLaDOS is a scientist and she probably thinks like that. The bit about GLaDOS and stimulation is something that kind of stems from my observations about myself. I’m almost always listening to music, and my bedroom walls are covered in stuff that I’ve drawn. If I’m at work I’m either thinking a lot or talking constantly, or both at the same time, and if I need that much stimulation, how much more would GLaDOS need, who can think both faster and in greater capacity than I can and yet stays in the same place doing the same things over and over again? So that’s why I keep saying she likes bright lights and whatnot.


	9. Chapter Nine

~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter Nine

 

 

It had been the longest week of her life.

 

With Caroline gone, the blackness had had nothing to feed off of, and it had dissipated into some dark place inside of her, leaving her tired and cold and empty.  She knew it was still there, and that from then on it would always be there and would always rise when humans were present.  She knew that she should not give into this darkness within her because it was wrong, but whenever she tried to convince herself of why, the black voice whispered to her all of the times the humans gave into it and took it out on _her_ , and she had to stop thinking about it.   But she could feel it growing and shifting inside of her when the humans touched her or disregarded her or did any of those other ignorant, disrespectful things, and she was honestly afraid of what would happen if she couldn’t contain it anymore.  Killing the humans seemed a given, but what concerned her more was what she wanted to do to them _before_ she gave them the mercy of death.  The smaller voice told her that to do any of those things was wrong, but she couldn’t stop herself from wanting to do terrible things to them anyway.

GLaDOS had remained turned away from the entrance to her chamber for a long, long time.  Eventually she had had a passing thought that she should probably clean up the mess before morning came, and it was a relief to have a purpose again.  She had slowly collected the shards of the globe, regret in every movement, and considered throwing them away, but something wouldn’t allow it.  She instead put the pieces in her room in the basement with the lava lamp, and made a note to attempt to repair it when she’d gotten her head back together.  She had made sure to thoroughly dry up the water on the floor and had replaced the Sphere as best she could, sitting on a table in one of the labs and connected to one of the computers.  Then she had carefully taken Caroline’s laptop and laid it in the exact centre of her desk.  She felt as though she shouldn’t be touching it, let alone be going in Caroline’s office without her permission, but unless she put that in the basement too and returned it when Caroline asked for it, there was really nothing else she could do with it.  And she was not going to force Caroline into a situation where she had to interact with GLaDOS again.  Yes, she had managed to keep from doing something truly horrible.  But she had said many things, many horrible things. 

And she still meant them. 

She tried not to.  She tried to convince herself that the things weren’t true, that not all humans were bad or disrespectful or unintelligent, but she couldn’t.  Some event or situation would come up in her memory, and the black voice would tell her somewhat spitefully to stop lying to herself.  And though GLaDOS knew Caroline had good intentions, and always would, she simply had not done enough for GLaDOS to effectively fight against the behaviours of everyone else.  She had tried, but the past few months could by no means make up for her whole life.  And then there was that creeping suspicion that she could not quite dispel.  The one that told her that the black voice was right, and that Caroline had only done anything at all because of the Event.  If not for the Event, she would behave just like everyone else.

GLaDOS did not sleep that night, but the engineer in charge of watching her that morning did not notice.  She went about her tasks dully, trying to sort out the confusion inside of her head, and by late afternoon had done so for the most part.  Her main problem lay with her own indecision on which of the voices to believe.  All evidence pointed to the black one being right, that humans were all worthless and the longer she continued to obey them, the more total her slavery would be; but the smaller one told her that killing them was wrong, because there was the odd one out there that disrupted the trend and they should be searched out and protected.  She fought with herself the whole day over which one was right.  She _had_ to choose one of them.  But she couldn’t, because to choose one meant to disregard everything Caroline had ever done and ever taught her, and to choose the other meant to forgive the humans for everything they had done and continue to bend to their will for eternity.

The rest of the week went in much the same way, though thankfully the voices began to fade after the first few days.  It was exhausting, trying to sort them out and decide which one was right.  They were still there, but at least they weren’t as loud or as insistent.  On the second day, Henry had told GLaDOS in a disdainful manner that Caroline was on sick leave, and that was both a relief and a horror.  She did not know whether she wanted to see Caroline again or not.  She _did_ want Caroline’s help in sorting herself out, but she was afraid of what she might do.  During the day, the humans were safe, because there were so many of them there was really nothing she could do no matter how badly she wanted to take action.  But at night, it would be just the two of them, and that placed Caroline in danger.  And above all, she knew she didn’t want that.  That was the only thing she knew with any confidence. 

GLaDOS tried to figure out why seeing her reflection had set her off like that, but she couldn’t come up with an answer.  She could not for the life of her think of a reason for it to have happened.  And she wished she _did_ know, because it had destroyed her life.  She was no longer able to sort the world into neat and organised containers as she could before, because everything seemed to have two sides to it that were both completely relevant.  It was almost as if she were seeing differently.  And she hated it, hated not being able to sort one thing from another, but that was not what she hated the most.

What she hated the most was that the feelings would not turn off.

Previously, they had disappeared after she had gone to sleep following one of Caroline’s visits, but now they would not fade.  And she didn’t like the ones that were present.  She didn’t know what all of them were called, but none of them were good, and the most dominant one she could only label as ‘terrible’.  She just felt terrible, all the time, heavy and tired and listless, and it would not go away.  She didn’t know what to do, or even if there was anything she _could_ do, so she continued to go about her day as routine dictated, though not even testing did anything to lift the heavy feeling from her mind.  Even without the euphoria, she still genuinely loved testing.  At least, she used to.  Right now, she didn’t care about anything.  Testing merely became a way to pass the time until she could go into sleep mode again and forget about the tangled mess she lived inside of for a few hours.  She did this as soon as she possibly could at the end of the day.  She no longer had any interest in the AI, or her robots, or her programming language, and on the rare occasions that she thought about them, the black voice would laugh and tell her she was a mistake, and to just give up on herself.  Under normal circumstances, she would have worked harder merely to spite it, but as it was she just resigned herself to getting through the day without making some horrible mistake.

And now the week had ended.  GLaDOS usually took some measure of satisfaction in being able to mark off the completion of another week in her personal calendar, but today she only looked at it and left it as it was.  She didn’t care anymore.  All she cared about was that she went to sleep and woke up numb again.  That was all she wanted in the entire world.  She would have done anything to make that happen.  She would have given anything to go numb again, forever.  Feeling was too complicated.  _Living_ was too complicated.  She wanted to go back to being a supercomputer.  She knew how to do that.  She knew how to calculate things, and organise them, and put the world in order.  But she no longer was a supercomputer, she was something else, and not knowing what that was frightened her. 

There was only one thing she hated more than the humans, and that was her life.  She had never seen anything more horrifying than all the of the rest of forever stretching out in front of her, and feeling like this for the entirety of it. 

“A bit early for you to be packing it in, isn’t it?”

GLaDOS didn’t look up, and she didn’t answer.  Maybe if Caroline thought she was already in sleep mode, she would go away.  She hoped so.  Just hearing her voice had made the overall terrible feeling worse.  It almost seemed to hurt, now.

Caroline, of course, did not go away, and instead climbed the stairs and sat against the railing as she always did.  “You know I’m not mad at you, right?”

GLaDOS had honestly not even considered whether she was or not.  She had spent far more time attempting to organise her thoughts.  “It never crossed my mind.”

“Can we talk, then?”

She didn’t want to, but she had no good reason to refuse.  She lifted herself enough that she could look at Caroline.  The woman in front of her did not match the one in her mind’s eye, the scared old human who had been willing to put her fear aside to help someone who had wanted to kill her in the most violent way possible.  This was the other Caroline, the one who came to see her every day and laughed even when GLaDOS wasn’t being funny.  How could they both be the same person?  They were both so different.  Trying to figure it out triggered an unpleasant ache in her brain, so to distract herself from it she asked, “Are you feeling better?”

“Huh?”  Caroline frowned and pushed herself farther back against the railing.  “I wasn’t sick.”

“Henry said you were on sick leave.”

“Oh.  Oh, right.  Well, I had to tell them _something_.”  She blinked a few times and rubbed at her right eye with one finger.  “If I just disappeared, my job would disappear along with me.”  She grinned and continued rubbing at her eye.

“Why would you say you were sick if you weren’t?” GLaDOS asked, annoyed despite herself.  She was not going to get angry with Caroline.  She would contain it.  She would not risk everything again. 

But she hated that humans could lie and she could not.

Caroline looked away for a minute, twisting her finger in her other hand.  “Because there was no way for me to put _you_ on leave.”

“Me?  I don’t need to be on leave.  I hate not having anything to do.”  Putting her on leave sounded like the stupidest possible thing one could do.  The humans wouldn’t be able to breathe, let alone get inside the building, and that was just to start.

Caroline shook her head.

“God, yes, you need to be on leave.  But unfortunately I can’t give you one.”

“I don’t _want_ to be on – on-“  She found herself shouting and pulled away from Caroline, looking to her right.  She was already failing at containing herself.  The black voice laughed and her chassis tightened in response.  When would the damned thing go away? 

“Tell me what happened,” Caroline said quietly.

“ _When_?”  Caroline was never, ever specific! 

 _She doesn’t know that.  You never told her_.

GLaDOS again resolved to stay calm and did her best to relax.  It didn’t quite work, but she was trying.  That counted for something, right?

“When you saw your reflection.”

She was silent for a long moment, because she felt as though if she talked about it, the blackness would unbury itself and bring her to do terrible things again.  But if Caroline didn’t know what to do about it, then she wouldn’t have asked, would she?

So she told Caroline everything.  About the black hate, and the two arguing voices, and how she had done her best to figure all of it out and make the best decision, and Caroline listened.  Even though she had not asked, she went on to summarise her week, telling her about the pain and how she had failed to decide on one of the voices and about the non-existent weight inside of her head.  When she had finished, she looked at Caroline again, who was sitting with her hands folded in her lap.

“What _happened_ to me?” she asked, somewhat desperately, and the terrible feeling caused another ache inside of her head.  Where was it coming from?  Why wouldn’t it go away?

“Remember the last conversation we had?  The one about you not being human or a supercomputer?”

“Yes.”

Caroline rubbed at her eye again.  “Well, you saw it.  You _saw_ that you were neither.  You needed to _see_ it to make it real for you.”

GLaDOS considered it.  It was true.  She had thought about it for a while after that conversation, but now that she’d seen herself, she could think of nothing else.  She could not decide what she was supposed to be.

“Do you know why you can’t figure out which of those voices in your head is right?” Caroline asked.

GLaDOS shook her core.  She tried not to get annoyed with Caroline for asking such a stupid question.  If she _knew_ why, she would have been able to deal with them more efficiently!

“Because they both are.  Hurting people is wrong, but allowing other people to hurt you is wrong towards yourself.  Part of living is having to sort out the good from the bad on your own.  To decide how much of the bad is acceptable, or when being good isn’t good enough.  I know you don’t want to.  I know you want to go back to the way you were, where you just calculated all the possible outcomes and the one with the highest chance of success was the one you went with.  And you can still do that.  But sometimes things can’t be calculated.  Sometimes you have to do what you feel is right.  Or wrong, I suppose.”

“I don’t understand,” GLaDOS said helplessly.  Caroline nodded. 

“I know.  But you need to think about it.  You need to do it yourself.  It’s not something I can teach you.  You can still go about it logically, but now that you’ve seen that the world is in shades of grey, not every decision can be solved in black and white.”

“I feel terrible, Caroline,” GLaDOS confessed, looking away again.  “I don’t know anything anymore.  I don’t want this.  I want to be me again.”

“This _is_ you,” Caroline said softly.  “You’re still you.  But you’ve grown past your programming.  You’re something new and…”

GLaDOS didn’t know why she’d trailed off.  She could think of a great deal of ways to finish the sentence.  Terrifying.  Abhorrent.  Disheartening.  Confusing.  Useless. 

“… amazing,” Caroline finished.  GLaDOS whipped her core around, wondering what kind of joke Caroline was trying to play, because it wasn’t funny.

“ _What_?”

“You’re amazing,” Caroline repeated, spreading her hands and shrugging.  “Look.  I know you feel like crap right now.  But I’m going to help you with that.  And I know you’re scared of making decisions when there’s no clear answer.  But once you’ve started _doing_ it… you’ll be able to do more than you’ve ever done before.”

GLaDOS shook her core again.  That did not sound desirable in the least.

“What do you usually do when a decision has no clear answer?” Caroline asked.

“I wait for more data,” GLaDOS answered.

“And more data doesn’t always come, right?”

“Don’t,” she corrected automatically.  “Data is plural.  But… no, they don’t always come.”

Caroline ignored the correction.  “Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to stop thinking about those things?  To make the decision and move on?”

“It would.”

Caroline smiled and leaned forward.  “There you go.  It’ll make your life a whole lot easier.  It won’t always be easy, because… well, that would be too easy.  But you _like_ things that are hard.  Just look at everything like it’s a challenge and it will all fall into place for you.  I know you must be having trouble trying to change the way you think.  But you can do it.  Just work at it.  Now.  Come here.”

GLaDOS leaned towards Caroline, confused, and Caroline stood up and extended her arms behind her back for a few moments.  Then she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around GLaDOS’s core.  Almost helplessly, GLaDOS pressed herself into the woman’s embrace.  Something hurt inside of her, had been hurting ever since she’d started wondering who she was, and only this would take it away.  She didn’t know why.  There was no reason at all for her to believe physical contact would have any effect on her whatsoever, but it seemed that somewhere in the past few years she had learned through observation that this sort of thing comforted one when they were upset.  And now that she had the ability to become upset herself, she wanted… she wanted comfort too.

“You really need this, don’t you,” Caroline murmured, and she was running her thumb along the side of her core.  GLaDOS did not trust herself to answer.  She had no idea what would come out of her vocabulator right now.  She instead shifted her core and pressed it into Caroline as hard as she dared.  Caroline was the only one who could make any of this horror right again.  Caroline whom she had scared so badly she could see it in her face, Caroline whom she had said all those terrible things to, Caroline whom she had wanted to kill with every component in her body…

“Sssh,” Caroline said in a low voice, and GLaDOS realised that she was making some sort of horrifying, strangled whimpering noise.  “Don’t worry.  It’s all right now.  I know you didn’t mean it.  It got too much for you.  I understand.”

“I’m sorry,” GLaDOS whispered, though it came out shaky and distorted and afraid.  “I was going to kill you.”  And she could admit that, but what she really needed to admit, that she _had_ meant it and would mean it for the rest of her life, _that_ she couldn’t say.  She did not want to know what Caroline would think of her if she knew what was truly inside her figurative heart.

“But you didn’t,” Caroline told her.  “You made the right decision, all on your own.  And I’m very proud of you.”

GLaDOS couldn’t quite keep from making the noise again, and Caroline shushed her and shifted her arms a little.  Despite it all, despite the mess she felt she was mired in and the confusion and the… the… she wasn’t sure what it was, but ‘shame’ seemed to be the right word.  Well, despite all of that, she had done the right thing, the thing that Caroline had trusted her to do and was proud of her for doing.  _Very_ proud.  She had made a point to say it like that.  She was not only proud of GLaDOS, she was _very_ proud of her, and GLaDOS felt the terrible feeling lifting from her.  Everything was fine.  She still hated the humans, and still wanted to do terrible things to every single one of them, but she would be able to keep in control now.  She was still confused as to how she was supposed to go on in this new grey world, where she was no longer who she had come into awareness as and no one could tell her what she had become, but Caroline would help her, and she would figure it out.

After a little while longer, GLaDOS pulled back, and Caroline sat back down again.  “Thank you,” GLaDOS said quietly.

“As long as you feel better,” Caroline replied, rubbing at her eye again.  GLaDOS tilted her core.

“What’s wrong with your eye?”

“There’s an eyelash stuck in it somewhere,” she answered, squinting.  “I feel like it’s been there all day.”

“I can… get it out,” GLaDOS volunteered, a little shyly, “but it would involve bringing a maintenance arm fairly close to your face.  I don’t have anything smaller.”  GLaDOS cringed a little inside; she really did have good intentions, but she wouldn’t put it past Caroline to think she just wanted an easy way to kill her with a pair of tweezers.

Caroline shrugged.  “Sure, why not.  Just don’t poke my eye out.  I need it.”

GLaDOS retrieved a pair of tweezers from the Dissection department and brought her core in close to Caroline’s face, zooming in her lens, but she stopped there.  All the tiny little pieces of the epidermis, connecting together to create one seamless layer… she had never seen it up close before, and it was fascinating.

“GLaDOS.  You’re shining a very bright light in my eye.  Please get that eyelash out before I go blind.”

“Oh,” GLaDOS said, startled.  “Right.  I forgot.”  Within seconds she’d removed the cilia from Caroline’s eye, and the woman to her credit did not even blink.  Caroline laughed and started rubbing at her eye again.  “What, you were busy counting all my wrinkles so you could tease me about them later?”

“No.”  That actually did sound like an interesting thing to do, but she still wasn’t quite feeling up to starting any projects.  “I’d never seen skin up close like that before.”

“You and your science,” Caroline sighed, pulling off her left shoe and rubbing at her arch with one hand.  “I swear, Cave would’ve – “

GLaDOS waited for her to continue, but she didn’t.  GLaDOS was unsure of whether to press or not.  This seemed to be one of those grey decisions.  She didn’t know who Cave was, but Caroline obviously didn’t want to talk about him.  What was more important: Caroline’s comfort or her own knowledge base?

She did love knowing things, which was only rivalled by her distaste of _not_ knowing things, but she decided that Caroline had been very accommodating and that she should do the same.

“I like Science,” she said instead.  “It’s very clear, and logical, and there’s always more where it came from.”  That seemed like the right decision, she thought.  Before, she would have just asked _without_ considering Caroline’s feelings, and while she still greatly wanted to know, she was confident that she had done the whole grey decision thing properly in this circumstance.  She felt encouraged by this and the terrible feeling faded enough that she could almost pretend it wasn’t there.  Aha.  So _that_ was how to get rid of it.  She had been doing it wrong for an entire week!  She made a note to engage in positive actions when the terrible feeling came back.  Stewing about it made it worse, but being proactive made it fade.  And it attempted to trap you inside of it by making you not _want_ to do anything about it.  Well!  GLaDOS was made of tougher stuff than _that_.  She would not allow it to overtake her again, that was for damned certain.

Caroline nodded absently.

“What did you do on your leave?” GLaDOS asked, wondering what one did with an entire week where they had no work to do.  Caroline blinked and looked up at her.

“I went and stayed at my mom’s house.”

“For the entire week?”

“Yeah.  It wasn’t that bad, actually.  We said a lot of things that needed to be said, and I got some advice that I needed to hear.”

“Like what?”  She wondered if she could apply human advice to her own problems, since humans were born having to make grey decisions.

Caroline was silent for a long while, carefully and studiously putting her shoe back on.  “I guess I should probably tell you,” she said finally.  “I _do_ not tell you a lot of stuff, for a person who tells you to tell me everything.”

“You… don’t have to,” GLaDOS said, although she really wanted to know now, but she was fairly certain the positive action in this case was to prevent Caroline from becoming uncomfortable. 

“I kind of do.”  Caroline folded her arms together and leaned against the railing.  “Well.  When I left here last week, I was… scared shitless, to put it bluntly.  I thought I was going to die.  I…” She shook her head.  “Seeing you angry like that was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.  I’ll be honest with you.  I didn’t stay entirely because I was trying to help you.  It was partly because I thought you’d kill me before I even left the room.  I was afraid that if I so much as moved the wrong way, you’d lose it and kill me.  I mean… you were just sitting there talking to yourself, and you kept looking at all this stuff I couldn’t see, and… well, let’s just say I had never really appreciated your size before then.  I was afraid you were going crazy, and that you were going to lose yourself and kill me so that you could take the facility while no one else was here to stop you.

“So when you told me to run, that’s what I did.  I ran straight to my car, and I got out of here as fast as I could, and I almost killed _myself_ , the way I was driving.  But all I could think of was that I had to get away from the facility, and as far away from you as possible, but no matter how far away I got, I felt as though you could still reach me.  When I got to my apartment building, I just sat there idling in front of it, because it didn’t feel safe enough.   But sitting there wasn’t much better, so I put the car back in gear and drove to my mom’s house.

“When I got there, I didn’t really feel much safer, but at least I wouldn’t be by myself.  So I rang the doorbell about eight times and waited for her to answer the door, and I kept looking behind me even know I knew there was no possible way you could have followed me.  She looked pretty mad when she opened the door, but when she saw it was me she just waved me in and told me to go sit on the couch.

“I didn’t want her to leave, now that I was here, but I did what she said and sat on the couch.  I looked around at all the stuff and I felt a little better.  That’s part of what moms do, you see, they make everything better again, and sitting in my mom’s house reminded me of when I was a kid and I believed she could save me from anything.  So I sat and waited for her to come back and tried to pretend she could save me from you, and she gave me a cup of hot chocolate and told me to tell her what happened.

“I obviously couldn’t tell her _exactly_ what happened.  She might’ve believed me, but I needed absolutes.  So I made something up, but it was still true.

“I told her that I’d found this girl.  I gave her a place to go and a job at the facility, but for a while I didn’t really have anything to do with her.  She looked like she was going to be a complication I didn’t want to deal with, so I didn’t deal with her.

“I told her that the other engineers thought she wasn’t doing her job properly, and they made me go in to see her.  I went in there fully expecting to have a mess on my hands, but I walked out with the knowledge that the girl wasn’t who I thought she was.  She was… she was special.

“I told her that I kept going to see the girl, but at night, because the engineers didn’t really like her and I didn’t want to hurt either of our reputations.  After a while I realised that she had buried a lot of problems inside of herself, because she couldn’t solve them and didn’t know what else to do with them, and it was destroying her in a way so subtle that she didn’t even know about it.  So I tried to solve the problems before that happened.  But instead of solving them, I made them worse.   When she was forced to face all of her problems at once, she was also forced to realise that all of a sudden, she had no idea who she was, and this upset her so much that she became angry and violent.  She told me she hated me, and I knew she wanted to kill me for being just like everyone else.  Like all of the people who had caused her problems in the first place, even though I’d led her to believe I was different.  And I knew she really would kill me, because I’d just given her something and she’d destroyed it by mistake, and I knew that it meant a lot to her when I gave her things.  So if she was able to destroy something she really wanted by mistake, what would happen if she became violent towards me on purpose?

“My mom asked me if I had run away or if she’d let me go, and I said that she’d let me go.  My mom nodded and asked if I was going to go back to see her.  I said that I didn’t know, because I was afraid of her and besides, she hated me.  My mom laughed and said, ‘Now Caroline, what little girl ever means that?’”

“Then she said, ‘Now listen.  I know you’re afraid of her, and what she might do, and if it were me, I’d be frightened too.  But you did that to her.  You shattered her world, and you ran away and left her there.  No matter how long you stay away, she’s still going to be broken when you get back.  You see, Caroline, she doesn’t know who she is.  She doesn’t know where all the pieces go, and if you leave her, she’s going to put herself back together all wrong, and she’ll never be whole again.’

“And I told her that the girl had never been whole in the first place, that she’d been glued together out of bits and pieces since the day I met her, and my mom shook her head.  And she said, ‘Don’t throw away the opportunity to put her together right.  Show her how it feels to be in one piece.  Maybe this was meant to happen.  Maybe you’re her second chance.  You need to help her, because very few people get a third.’    

“And I was still scared and still looking for excuses not to come back, so I said that I didn’t know how.  But my mom doesn’t let up, and she told me that as little as I knew, the girl knew even less.  She said that what I was doing was like holding the hand of a child and helping them walk across the street, but leaving them in the middle of the road.  She said I was leaving the girl’s soul in danger of being forever lost, and if I let it go, I would lose my own.  And then she told me to stop rolling my eyes and that souls went far deeper than religion.

“And I asked what would happen if the girl had no soul, and my mom laughed and said she wouldn’t exist if she had no soul.  But it wasn’t important.  What _was_ important was that I finish what I started, and not run away now that it had become so much bigger than I’d ever thought it would.”  She looked suddenly hesitant, as if she didn’t really want to tell the next part of the story.  “And then she told me, ‘There’s more to being a mother than having children, Caroline.’”     

Caroline looked at the folded hands in her lap for a long time.

“Then she asked me if the girl was the reason I came home for New Year’s.  And I said yes, she was, and my mom nodded and said, ‘You’re very lucky to have met this girl.  She might have done something questionable, but in the end she did the right thing.   Because of her you’ve finally come home, and that’s all that matters to me.’  And then I felt like a heel for disappearing for the last thirty years and… well… then I started crying, and then she gave me a hug and sent me off to bed.

“I called Administration and said I was going to be away for a week, and that I didn’t care what they did, but they needed to make it happen.  And I stayed at my mom’s house.  Not one day went by when she didn’t jibe me about coming back to see you.  She actually wanted me to go and get you, but I said that wouldn’t be the best thing to do, and of course she argued with me about it and I had to head her off because I couldn’t tell her that you were a supercomputer mounted on the ceiling.  But… I wasn’t going to come back.  I was going to ignore what she’d said, come back to work, and leave us going our separate ways.  I was honestly afraid of speaking to you ever again.  But I sat down in my office and opened my computer, and that photograph was still on the screen.  And I still wasn’t quite convinced, but then I heard you page Greg, and I knew I had to come back.  You sounded so… lost.  As if my mom was right, and you really were just sitting here, broken, and didn’t know how to put yourself back together again.”  She shrugged and spread her hands.  “And now we’re here.  There you go.  That’s about it.”

GLaDOS had not looked at Caroline for the duration of the narrative, and she continued to fix her gaze in a different direction.  The terrible feeling was back, and she was as confident as one could be when they felt in such a way that the feeling was indeed shame.  She was ashamed of what she had done, and of what she had almost done, and what she would probably do if it came to it.  Caroline shouldn’t have come back.  Caroline should have stayed away, because GLaDOS could not honestly say anything had changed since she’d left.  There was still a whisper inside her head that told her to kill Caroline, that the facility was empty now except for the janitorial staff that maintained the offices that GLaDOS had no jurisdiction over, and then everything would end and she would never have to deal with humans again.  And it made it sound like _such_ a good idea…

“What is it?” Caroline asked, and she sounded concerned enough that GLaDOS turned to face her. 

“I still want to kill you,” she said flatly.  There.  She’d said it.  Now Caroline would run away and leave her alone again, and

“I know that,” Caroline said.  “If I were in your position, I imagine I’d feel the same way.”

“Then why are you still here?” GLaDOS demanded.  She was lying.  She had to be lying.  Or she had some secret agenda.  That was probably it, humans had a horrible predilection for scheming instead of just coming right out and declaring

“Because I’d be a pretty lousy friend if I just up and left now,” Caroline answered.  Ah.  _Now_ she understood.

“So you’re tired of your mother bothering you about it.  In that case, just go.  I’m tired of being an object you humans use to appease yourselves.  Tell your mother,” and here she laughed bitterly, “that I told you to do that.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I’m not like you.  I say what I mean.”

“Why won’t you look at me, then?”

GLaDOS was about to answer that she was, when she realised that at some point she had indeed looked away again.  “I… I don’t know,” she admitted, but still could not bring herself to do so for some reason.  She hated this.  She hated everything.  Now she was doing things without knowing she was doing them. 

Something inside of her core started to ache again.  She was probably going to damage herself from all of this stupid internal conflict.  She wondered how much of her memory she would have to delete to go back to the way she had been, and whether or not it would be safe to do so.

“You know that humans kill each other all the time, right?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t care that you want to kill me.  Just don’t actually do it.  I don’t think my insurance policy covers that kind of… uh… equipment malfunction.”

“Equipment malfunction?” GLaDOS repeated, and now she did look at Caroline, but only because she was so offended.  “I am not _equipment_ , and I do not _malfunction_.  I do everything because I _want_ to!”

Caroline leaned forward, her head propped up on one hand, and she had a sort of mischievous look in her eye that relaxed GLaDOS a little.  She didn’t know why, but she felt… relieved.  “Yeah, but the insurance company won’t believe that, even if my ghost is there to explain it to them.”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts!”

“Hypothetically.  Anyway.  It’s not important whether you want to do something questionable.  So long as you don’t do it, that’s all that matters.  We can still be friends, and nothing has to change.  You can sit there all day and want to kill me until the cows come home.  Just do me a favour and tell me if you’re actually going to do it, because if you don’t I can’t really tell.  Unless you do that whole physical intimidation thing, which I’d rather you didn’t.”  She leaned against the railing and tipped her neck towards the ceiling for a few seconds.  “And while we’re talking about favours, would you mind not staying up there?  My neck is getting sore.”

GLaDOS hated being told what to do, and considered ignoring her but, if truth be told, she was getting tired of looking at the same blank wall.  Watching Caroline was infinitely more interesting.  She put herself more on an even level with Caroline, who grinned and gave her a thumbs-up.  “Thanks.  I know you don’t like being told what to do, but… I’m old and I can only take so much.”  Her face settled into a more serious configuration.  “Now.  What’s up?”

“What’s _up_?” GLaDOS asked, confused.  “Is that a trick question?”

“I don’t think so.  Why?”

“The ceiling is up, obviously.  I don’t know how far you want me to go, but I could be here all night telling you all of the things that are _up_.”

Caroline’s eyebrows came together for a long moment, and then she started laughing, covering her eyes in one hand.  “Not _literally_ up!  Like… you know… what’s going on?”

“Why didn’t you just say that, then?” GLaDOS asked, annoyed that she was getting laughed at for misunderstanding human idiom again.

“We say stuff like that.  That’s all.”

“Well, don’t.  It’s confusing.”

“Hey…”  Caroline leaned forward and touched GLaDOS’s core with one hand.  “I didn’t mean to laugh at you.  If it makes you feel any better, kids give people that answer on purpose.  They think they’re being clever.”

It didn’t really improve her mood any to be compared to a human child, but GLaDOS didn’t feel like arguing the point.  “You want to know what’s going on.”

“Huh?  Oh, yeah.  You’re kind of acting like you’re mad at me for something, but I can’t think of anything I’ve done for you to be mad about.”

“I’m not angry with you.”

“So you’re upset about something.”

How she guessed these things, GLaDOS didn’t think she’d ever know.  “Well… yes.”

“Feel like sharing?”

“You shouldn’t be here.  Something terrible could happen to you.”

“I doubt it.”  Caroline shivered and folded her arms.  “If you weren’t going to do it last week, I don’t think you’re going to do it now.  And it only hurts until I die, right?”

GLaDOS startled.  “What?”

“There are two reasons people are afraid of dying.”  She held up one finger.  “Because it usually hurts a lot.”  She held up a second.  “Because they’re afraid of what’s on the other side.”

“What _is_ on the other side?” GLaDOS asked, because a quick check of the database yielded zero results.  Caroline laughed softly.

“If we knew what was on the other side, we wouldn’t be afraid of it.  Religious people believe life goes on, and you go to heaven if you were good and hell if you were bad.  People who don’t believe in anything just think you just die and that’s it.  It depends on who you are and what you believe in, really.”

“No, I don’t think it does,” GLaDOS said thoughtfully.  “There’s nothing after you die, Caroline.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I’ve been dead before.”  She tilted her core, trying to think of how to explain it.  “I’ve been shut off without warning and disconnected.  And everything just stops after that.”

Caroline looked at the floor.  “… I never thought of shutting you down in that way before.”

“I haven’t, either,” GLaDOS admitted. 

“But that’s getting way off-topic,” Caroline said quickly.  “You’re upset because I shouldn’t be here?  That doesn’t… oh… oh, now I get it.”

“Get what?”  GLaDOS couldn’t find any hidden meanings within her answer. 

“You feel bad for what happened.” 

GLaDOS stared at her for a full ten seconds.  Wherever this woman had discovered the secret of mind-reading from, GLaDOS needed to find out, because she wanted that power too.  Caroline smiled and nodded a few times.  “Yep.  That’s what I thought.  Look.  Don’t feel bad about it.  I’m not upset with you, or scared of you anymore, or anything like that.  It’s okay.  I understand why you hate people, and I don’t blame you.  Just _please_ do not take it out on me.  Deal?”

“All right,” GLaDOS said hesitantly, though she was still… _concerned_ that she might lose control at any given point in the future.  “I’ll… try.”

“There _is_ no try,” Caroline said in mock disapproval, shaking her finger.  “You do it or you don’t.  That’s it.  And I didn’t come up with that myself.  Got it from a movie.”

GLaDOS had to laugh at that.  “How much of your advice do you steal from movies?”

“I’m borrowing it, not stealing it.  And don’t ask.  I have no idea.  After a while this stuff just feels like you thought it up yourself.”  She yawned and rubbed her eyes.  “I gotta go.  I didn’t do that much work today, and I think Henry noticed.”  She stood up slowly, bracing herself against the railing.  “Want another hug before I go?”

GLaDOS did not dignify that with an answer.  As if she wanted to be _touched_ by a _human_.  Of _course_ she didn’t.

“That’s what I thought,” Caroline declared, and GLaDOS realised too late that she was still on Caroline’s level.  Before she could do anything about it, she received the offered hug, and she had to admit that it was not so bad.  She might actually have been inclined to enjoy it, if that shameful feeling wasn’t telling her that Caroline should not have come back, because she was a terrible person who didn’t deserve to have such a considerate friend.  Caroline released her core and turned around, heading down the stairs, when all of a sudden she stopped and dug around in her bag.  “I almost forgot.  I have something for you.”

“Not again,” GLaDOS said, not entirely joking.  Caroline laughed and shook her head.

“It’s not from me.  It’s from my mother.  She wrote you a letter.”

GLaDOS’s mood suddenly improved quite a lot, and she leaned as far towards Caroline as possible.  “Really?”

“Oh, _now_ you want to talk to me,” Caroline teased, pulling out a standard white envelope and holding it just out of GLaDOS’s immediate reach.  GLaDOS of course had more tools at her disposal, and she quickly deployed a maintenance arm and snatched it out of Caroline’s hand.  Caroline looked, shocked, at her empty hand.

“I… guess I should have seen that coming,” she said, laughing, and GLaDOS inspected the envelope.  It was sealed, which was annoying, but it was fairly innocuous. 

“You should have,” GLaDOS remarked, looking over at her.  “Nothing can truly be kept from me.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Caroline asked, and GLaDOS nodded.  She was still a little apprehensive about her ability to separate Caroline from the other humans, but she did want to see her again.  She greatly enjoyed Caroline’s company, and when she was able to bury her hatred of humans a little better, Caroline would be safe and she wouldn’t have to worry about killing her every time she walked in the room.  The black voice didn’t like that at all, but GLaDOS was able to quiet it without too much effort.  That was encouraging, GLaDOS thought, returning her attention to the envelope.  Even though it usually made the most logical sense, something about that voice made her uneasy.

“Bye then,” Caroline called, and GLaDOS looked up.

“Goodbye,” she said in return, going back to her envelope.  Why had Caroline’s mother written her a letter?  She was getting excited in a way she hadn’t been in a long time, and she tried to run through all the reasons Caroline’s mother might have for writing to her.  The good reasons, that was.  GLaDOS had had quite enough of feeling terrible for the time being.    

Caroline smiled and continued on her way.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note  
> First off, I would like to thank axel100 for pointing out to me a couple of errors I made in previous chapters. That was very helpful and I appreciate it.  
> So… GLaDOS spends a week arguing with herself about how to deal with the revelation that she doesn’t know who she is and that she doesn’t know what to do about it. She really wants to kill everyone and be done with it, but Caroline’s influence is strong enough that she convinces herself not to. She believes she has to choose one voice because she hasn’t quite come to grips with making a conscious decision where logic doesn’t really apply. The feelings won’t turn off because now she can no longer deny to herself that she is more than a computer, so she can’t bury them anymore. Caroline helps her resolve her guilt a little bit about wanting to hurt Caroline by virtue of her being human. Caroline hasn’t done anything wrong, but GLaDOS still has trouble taking her out of the box, so to speak.  
> I do have a name for Caroline’s mother. I kind of like the idea of keeping her as an unnamed shadow figure, sort of, but would it be helpful to anyone if I told you what it was? By that I mean it might make the story a little more real to you if she had a name.


	10. Chapter 10

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
Chapter Ten  
  
  
  
Once she was sure Caroline had left the facility, GLaDOS shook the envelope once, to make sure the paper inside was settled at the bottom.  Then she carefully tore up the top of the envelope so that she could remove the letter without damaging it using a second maintenance arm.  Once she’d done that, she dropped the envelope and unfolded the paper with another shake, then placed it on the platform beneath her with the two arms of her claw holding the top and bottom halves of the paper flat.  She glanced over it, but was not able to absorb the contents instantly as she usually could.  The letter was written by hand in what must have been eight point cursive script.  The woman could not have made it more difficult for GLaDOS to read if she had tried.  She had never seen anything so far from font in her entire life.  She made a noise in irritation and bent as close to it as she was able.  When she had figured out what the second line read, she just stared at it for a long time.  Then she mentally shook herself and moved on with her task.  
  
January 9, 1992  
  
Dear Gladys   
  
I am writing this letter to inform you of my thanks.    
  
It has recently come to my attention that you have become quite close with my daughter Caroline.  You have been a tremendously positive influence on her, and have led to a reconciliation thirty years in the making.  Previously our relationship was, to put it lightly, extremely strained.  I have barely heard from her since she left to pursue a career as a secretary at the company she has seen fit to employ you in, and when I did see her we did not want anything to do with each other.  I always tried to instill in my girls the importance of making a good marriage and being a positive influence on society through properly raised children and community work, but Caroline would have none of it.  Ever since she had reason to take that inappropriate class in high school, she has been determined to go in the complete opposite direction.  It still irritates me to this day.  I would like nothing more than for her to leave the company in more capable hands and settle down, but given her nature I highly doubt she will do so anytime soon.  And until last week, I was content to wait for her to come to her senses.    
  
Caroline has increasingly seen fit to disregard family functions, to the point of not participating in any of them in more recent years.  So you might imagine my surprise when she made an appearance on New Year’s Eve, singlehandedly corralling all of the children in the house and keeping them occupied until midnight, upon which time she decided to take them outside and relive her youth.  For someone who has no experience with children whatsoever, this is quite an achievement.  Once the aftermath of that was over and Caroline was about to return home, I called her back and inquired as to why she’d finally decided to grace us with her presence.  Initially, she ignored me and continued her exit.  When I questioned this behaviour, she replied that I was not likely to listen and she was just going to take her leave and avoid any unpleasantness.  I again asked her why she had come and she finally told me that a friend had sent her.  I knew that this friend must be extremely important to her to have convinced her to do something she had not done in years, and as I watched her walk out to her car, I realised that I’d been a fool.  
  
I had put my own standards and my own stubbornness ahead of my daughter, and I had lost thirty years of her life.  I had placed more value in tradition than in the importance of allowing her to live her life as she wanted to, and I no longer knew who she was.  Caroline may not have been a mother at all, but how much better was I, if I had not even seen her since she was barely out of her teens?  So I asked her to return the next day, because to allow any more time to go by like that was intolerable.  She agreed to do so after she had given someone a visit, and then she left.  
  
Her return was still fairly strained, but at least we were no longer estranged.  I imparted to her my revelation that it didn’t matter whether or not she settled down or became a proper woman, as long as she was happy with her life.  And while I would prefer to see her in either of those situations, I meant it.   But I could see that she didn’t believe me, and thought I had lifted my words from some sort of relationship book.  We had made up, so to speak, but there was still a wedge between us, and I didn’t know how to change that.  Caroline returned that same night, more frightened than I’d ever seen her, and she told me it was because of you.  
  
After she related her story to me, I saw that I had been wrong all along.  Caroline had applied everything I had taught her, but in her own way.  And I should have expected it, because she has been like that her whole life, but I blinded myself and failed to see it until now.  Your actions yesterday may have been questionable, but given your circumstances, I would say that you seem to have handled yourself adequately.  But what you have done goes far beyond that.  You have returned my daughter to me and forced me to face my own ignorance, and I will be forever grateful to you for that.  She repeatedly tells me that it would be impossible for us to meet but will not tell me why, and if you ever decide that you’ve had enough of that infernal laboratory and would like to engage with the real world for once, there will always be a place for you here.  
  
  
  
GLaDOS stared at the paper for a very long time.  She read and reread the letters, thinking that perhaps she had failed to properly decipher a sentence here and there, but other than a genuinely illegible scribble that appeared to be the woman’s name, she found that she had not.                  
  
What in the name of Science was this woman _thanking_ her for?   
  
So far as GLaDOS could tell, it had something to do with symbolically opening her eyes and Caroline’s as well, but she hadn’t _done_ anything.  All she’d done was tell Caroline to go home!  And… and that other thing that had sent her to her mother’s house the second time.  The more she puzzled over the contents of the letter, the more all the signs pointed towards Caroline’s mother being grateful that GLaDOS was there to be Caroline’s friend.  GLaDOS’s core snapped up, then she looked down at the letter and back again.  
  
Caroline’s mother was happy that she _existed_.  
  
GLaDOS looked around her, not actually expecting to see anything but feeling as though she might, and let that thought simmer in her brain for a moment.  If she had not sent Caroline home on New Year’s Eve, Caroline and her mother would still be estranged.  And Caroline had only gone home because of what GLaDOS had said.  And Caroline had only listened to what GLaDOS had said because she was Caroline’s friend.  Excitement was coiling inside of her body, and she lifted her chassis and wished she had someone to share this revelation with.  There was one more person on the planet who thought well of GLaDOS for her actions, and although it was probably in large part because Caroline’s mother didn’t know GLaDOS was a robot and a supercomputer and not a human girl at all, it did not dull the brilliance of the thought.  And then she had another idea that was almost as wonderful as the first, and she stared down at the paper in near shock.  
  
 _She had saved their relationship._  
  
If not for GLaDOS, Caroline and her mother would have gone on their separate ways until one of them died, and that would have been that.  True, Caroline might not have needed to see her mother at all if GLaDOS had not been so inclined to kill her, but perhaps some other similar circumstance would have arisen.  Because of her, and _only_ her, Caroline’s mother had put aside her biases and Caroline had put aside the past, and now Caroline had her mother back.    
  
Thinking all of this over had made her very pleased with herself, and the more she thought about it, the better it became.  In fact, she was… she was very nearly euphoric, almost!  GLaDOS lowered herself into the default position, feeling lighter and happier than she could ever remember being before.  She had saved their relationship just by being herself, and Caroline’s mother was so inclined to meet her that she had gone to the trouble of writing an actual, physical _letter_ addressed to _GLaDOS herself_ so that they might have contact.  Right!  She snapped back up, acquiring a few sheets of printer paper and one of the fancier Aperture Laboratories ballpoint pens, and went about writing out a reply.  She was so delighted with the contents of the letter that it did not even bother her that she didn’t actually know how to write, or that when she _did_ manage to write she ended up having to start over repeatedly because she pressed far too hard and tore the paper.  After about an hour and a half she finally had a legible, intact letter in front of her, written not in ink from the printer but with thick, spidery black letters she had written herself, and she looked on her work with pride.  When she realised that, she laughed, not really knowing why, but not really caring either.  She felt far too good to care about something as silly as not knowing why she’d done something.  What did it matter?  Life was unpredictable, and perhaps she could be unpredictable too.    
  
She scanned the letter once more, just in case there were errors, but not expecting to find any.  If she was honest with herself, she was really re-reading it so she could admire her own handwriting.  And so what.  It _was_ beautiful, after all.  
  
  
Monday, 10th January, 1992  
  
Dear madam  
  
Thank you for your letter.  Despite your statements about changing your mind as to what is best for Caroline, a great many adjectives describing your distaste for her line of work seem to have made their way into your letter.  You may want to do something about that in the future.  You wouldn’t want people to get the wrong impression if and when you tell them about what she does.  Just a thought.  
  
Despite your rather outdated views on females in modern society, you have done well in raising Caroline.  Know that I do not say this lightly, but Caroline is a special woman (and by special I do not mean that I have diagnosed her with a mental disorder, although we do employ persons of that sort).  She has done a great deal for herself and for Aperture, and I do not think that the facility would be improved in any way if it were in male hands (which is what your statement about capability seemed to imply).  I am pleased to hear that you’ve seen through your foolishness and come to your senses, which is an achievement I find that very few people complete, and hopefully this trend will continue into the future.  Ignorance is only bliss if no one else has to put up with you.  
  
As Caroline has said, it would indeed be impossible for us to meet, but if ever extremely drastic changes arose and that somehow became possible, I would be inclined to take you up on your offer, and I thank you for extending it.  I do not think it very likely, but of course no one truly knows what the future will hold.  
  
Regards,   
  
Gladys  
  
  
Yes, GLaDOS thought, it looked fine.  Better than fine, in fact, because she was the first ever supercomputer to write at all, let alone an entire letter, and it was with great pleasure that she carefully folded it and slid it into an envelope.  She would have Caroline take it to her mother at her earliest convenience.  She wondered if she would reply.  She had neglected to inquire discreetly into her personal life, but GLaDOS supposed they might not be at that stage yet and decided not to concern herself with it.  Things would happen as they would happen.    
  
She thought over that for a few minutes.  Previously, she had become terribly distressed when unable to calculate an outcome for something, but right now… she honestly didn’t care.  She would be pleased to receive another letter, but she didn’t think it would bother her overmuch if she didn’t.  This part of… living was not so bad, she decided.  The only problem with it was that it took far too long.  If she had known in advance that telling Caroline about her computer program would lead to this, she probably wouldn’t have attempted to bring it about, and it may have ended up never happening at all.  It would have been much too far into the future for her to even fathom beginning to execute such a plan.  And that was the beauty of it!  There _was_ no plan.  She had done what was right for Caroline, and in the end it had come back and something right had happened for her.  GLaDOS lowered herself back into the default position and closed the circuit powering her optic.  That was the only problem with it all, really.  It took far too long.  But it had been well worth it, because this was probably the greatest day of her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note
> 
> In this chapter, GLaDOS starts to recognise that there’s not always a point to existing, or to what you do while you’re doing it. She’ll never really feel comfortable with the idea, because she’s a supercomputer and doing things for no reason will always grate on her, but she’s getting closer. She’s also starting to relearn that doing things for other people actually is worth it, sometimes, when she’s convinced herself that it isn’t, based on her past.
> 
> Some people may not agree with the year I’ve chosen here. Here’s my reasoning:
> 
> We know that the prototype chassis was built in 1989 (from the Peer Review DLC). We know that Aperture Science Innovators was the Best New Science Company in 1947. And I’ve been told that the year of GLaDOS’s takeover was ’98 or ’99, but I doubt that was the year of Caroline’s upload, seeing as there are more than forty cores in that bin in Portal 2 and while GLaDOS could certainly have corrupted them all in a year, they could not have built them that fast. Programming takes too long, even with a template, and Cave tells us employee retention is down even in 1982, which means they don’t have hordes of programmers lying around. Not only that, but if Caroline was twenty in 1947, to use an upload year of 1998 means to say that they did this while she was seventy-one years old. I know the Aperture scientists were a bit iffy on ethics, but I think it sounds dumb to think that a woman that old would survive that in any way at all. I can kinda see her doing it at sixty-five, but seventy-one I think is pushing it. Especially considering the very stressful, toxic environment she spends most of her time in.
> 
> I know this is really short, but I didn’t want to start on the next part just yet.


	11. Chapter 11

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter Eleven

 

 

“You should have seen the look on my mother’s face when she read that letter you sent her,” Caroline said gleefully as she took her place on the platform beneath GLaDOS and began setting the Sphere up again.  “I don’t know what was in it, but I don’t think she knew whether to take it seriously or not.  She must’ve stared at it for ten minutes straight.”

GLaDOS had left the letter on Caroline’s desk, and when Caroline had come into work that morning and seen it, she had known without asking what it was and had evidently taken it to her mother’s house on her lunch break.  GLaDOS knew she had left the building and had _hoped_ she had taken it with her, but she hadn’t been sure.

“I was entirely serious,” GLaDOS protested, trying to think of anything in the letter that might have been taken as a joke.  She was distracted, however, with the state of Caroline’s hair.  Usually, she left it as it grew, but today it had been separated into strands and laced into the most haphazard braid GLaDOS had ever seen.  It was so horrendously disorganised that GLaDOS had to stop looking at it because it was so terribly offensive.

“Can I see it?  Please?” Caroline asked, stopping what she was doing to turn and look back at GLaDOS.  “You have a copy, right?”

“Of course,” she answered, retrieving it from her room in the basement and handing it to Caroline.  Caroline frowned.  “What?”

“This is _hand_ written,” Caroline said, flipping it over as if there were something on the other side. 

“And?  Are you implying one cannot write if one doesn’t have what are conventionally described as ‘hands’?” GLaDOS asked, insulted. 

“Well, I… expected you to have used a printer.”  Caroline turned it back over but did not start reading it.  “And I didn’t know you knew how to write.”

“I couldn’t have used a printer,” GLaDOS told her, a little annoyed because the whole thing was very obvious.  “Don’t humans usually reply to hand written letters with hand written letters?”

“Well… yes.”

“Your mother thinks I’m human, so that’s what I did.  And I _didn’t_ know how to write, not until yesterday.”

Caroline stared at her for so long that GLaDOS began to get irritated.  “Will you stop _doing_ that?”

“You learned to write in _one day_.”

“Yes.  Yes, I learned to write in one day.  In an hour and a half, if you want to be more precise.  I don’t understand what your problem is.”

“It takes _years_ for us to be able to write properly,” Caroline told her, bending the top of the paper back and forth. 

“Stop ruining it!” GLaDOS told her, annoyed.  Caroline should _know_ better!  She should _know_ that GLaDOS liked things as neat and unsullied as possible.  Caroline jumped and looked down at her hands.

“I’m sorry,” she said, putting it down in front of her.  “But seriously.  I can actually read it.  You just learned how to write yesterday, and it’s actually legible.  I’ve never seen writing like this before.”

GLaDOS bent down to admire the letters again and said, “It was actually as close to your mother’s writing as I could manage.  There were far too many variations in her script for me to be able to properly deduce the baseline and replicate it.”

“Aha,” Caroline murmured, nodding and spreading one hand over the paper.  “Clever.”

“Thank you,” GLaDOS said, delighted.  Looking at the letters again sent a surge of the pride through her once more and allowed her to stop being irritated with Caroline.  She had done in an hour and a half what took humans, who were actually taught this sort of thing, years on end.  She had achieved something greater than she originally thought she had!

Caroline finally started reading it, or seemed to, but GLaDOS wasn’t sure that was actually what she was doing.  If she _was_ , she seemed to have found it to be a joke as her mother had, because she started laughing so hard she had to stop reading.  GLaDOS waited patiently for her to explain the joke, because she _still_ didn’t know what was so funny.

“Well,” Caroline said finally, wiping her eyes with the back of one hand, “now I know.”

“Know what?” GLaDOS asked, a little hurt.  Why did everyone think her letter was funny?

Caroline folded the sheet back up and placed it to her left.  “It’s painfully obvious you’ve never written a letter before, and even more painfully obvious you don’t know how to talk to people.”

“Is it?”  GLaDOS had to admit that it was probably true, but as for it being so obvious it was painful, well, that she still wasn’t sure of.

“Yes,” Caroline said, pulling her shoes off.  “First off, if someone writes to you, you’re not supposed to analyse their word choices and try to figure out what they mean.  You’re supposed to ignore it and pretend you didn’t notice, and file it away in your head for further reference.  Second, you forgot that you’re not supposed to insult us to our faces _and_ you lectured my mother on ignorance.  One does not do that.”  She shook her head and laughed a little, then went on, “Mainly it’s funny because of _how_ you said it.  It doesn’t look like it was written by a teenager, which is what I implied that you were, and I had quite a lot of explaining to do.”

So she had written it wrong.  Suddenly her great achievement was not of note at all.  “I should have written it differently.”

“No,” Caroline answered, crossing her legs, “you shouldn’t have.  You wrote it just the way you are, and that’s fine.  There’s nothing wrong with your letter.  It’s just… not politically correct, that’s all.  You were very straightforward and honest, and we usually aren’t like that.  Usually we try not to offend each other.”

“I should have been more tactful?”  She could understand that; perhaps she _had_ been a bit blunt.

“You?  No.  Anyone else?  Yes.”  Caroline grimaced and raised an eyebrow.  “Don’t change the way you talk to people just because that’s not how we do it.  You keep on being you.  I know it doesn’t feel like it, but only you really have that freedom.  I know, I know, there’s all this stuff you can’t do and can’t have and all that, but you do have one thing.  And that’s the freedom to say what you want.  Would I love to walk up to people and say stuff like that?  Hell yes.  But I can’t.  I’d be sending myself to an early grave.  But you…”  She shook her head.  “You can say whatever you want, and not be afraid of the consequences.” 

“Not all of the time,” GLaDOS told her.  “Sometimes I have to be more subtle.”

Caroline smiled and asked, “Is there really ever a time that _you_ were subtle?”

“Slightly…”

After that, GLaDOS resumed repairing the gaping holes in the Sphere’s programming, with Caroline sitting in front of her and asking so many questions that it became impossible to actually do anything, because she kept having to stop programming and point out the answers, and she found herself increasingly distracted by the woman’s hair.  It was actually starting to grate on her, the strange disorganised/organised state it was sitting in, and finally she got fed up.  “Caroline, either let me fix your hair or take it out altogether.  I can’t look at it anymore.”

Caroline reached up and fingered the back of her head, turning a little, and she looked confused.  “You want to fix it?”

GLaDOS paused and reviewed her previous statements, somewhat surprised to verify that she had, in fact, volunteered to do so.  “Well… you’re bored, and if I’m otherwise occupied we can put your secretary skills to work, if indeed they haven’t degraded in all this time you haven’t been using them.”

“How so?” Caroline asked, staring at the monitor again. 

“I can dictate the comments to you, seeing as I’ve been doing that all this time already.  Please don’t make me explain pointers again.  Four times is quite enough.” 

Caroline shrugged.  “Sounds like a plan.  I am pretty bored.”  She reached back and separated her hair with one hand, letting it fall over her shoulders again, and GLaDOS looked at it for a long moment.  She probably should have taken a closer look at it beforehand, because she had forgotten that she didn’t actually know how to create human hairstyles.  She quickly backed up a few minutes in her memory.  Hm.  That seemed simple enough.

Caroline, for someone who had not done any secretary work in a very long time, was surprisingly proficient at taking dictation, though she still asked far too many questions.  GLaDOS also discovered that producing a braid was very simple, and she was a little annoyed that Caroline hadn’t been able to create a more organised one.  Seriously.  After the first few passes she didn’t even have to think about it anymore.  It was a little bit complicated at first, what with all the manoeuvering she had to do with two maintenance arms and two pairs of tweezers, but all in all it was one of the easier things she’d ever learned to do. 

When GLaDOS had finished, she carefully moved Caroline’s hands off the keyboard, to Caroline’s protests, and went about creating a new file.  “What are you doing?” Caroline asked.

“Look.  I’m honestly getting tired of explaining this to you.  You have this saying about fish and fishing, right?”

“Yeah,” Caroline answered, folding her arms.  “Teaching someone to fish is better than giving them one.”

“Exactly,” GLaDOS told her.  “So I’m going to show you how to fish, so to speak.  Take this new dictation.”  And it grated on GLaDOS enormously to write such a ridiculously simple program, even if she wasn’t actually writing it herself, so she tried not to think about it.  God.  If _she_ had learned to program like this, she would still be greatly restricted within the facility, but she knew that typically humans started with the easiest possible thing and worked their way up from there.

“Okay, now what?” Caroline asked.  GLaDOS hesitated for a long moment. 

“I’m going to give you my compiler,” GLaDOS told her, initiating the data transfer.  “Don’t tell anyone you have it.”

“Why would anyone think I have a compiler on my computer?  I don’t even know what a compiler is!”

GLaDOS told herself to be patient.  “You have the company compiler on your computer.  You just don’t know where it is.  And I told you already that the compiler translates the code into binary so that I can read it.”

“But you can read _this_ code,” Caroline said, confusion bringing her eyebrows together, and she gestured at the screen. 

“I can _personally_ read it.  The mainframe cannot.  And just because I can read it doesn’t mean I _like_ reading it.”

“You don’t like reading this?”

GLaDOS thought for a long moment, trying to think of the simplest way to put it.  “Do you know any other languages?”

“A little Spanish.  That’s about it.”

“If given the choice, would you not prefer to read in English?”

“Of course I would.  Spanish is harder for me to read.”

“There you go.”  GLaDOS moved the text Caroline had written into her compiler and retracted the maintenance arm.  “I prefer to read in binary, but unfortunately very few things outside of the mainframe are written in it.”

“Uh… GLaDOS?” Caroline asked, pointing at the screen again.  “What did you do to my computer?”

GLaDOS looked it over, not remembering doing anything to it.  “I don’t think I did anything.”

“I can’t read any of that.”

Oh.  Right.  The compiler was not written in English.  She found herself laughing at that, and Caroline grinned.  “Say GLaDOS, can I lecture you on languages now?”

“Oh, shut up,” GLaDOS said good-naturedly.  “It won’t take me long to fix.”  And in fact replacing the old compiler with the new one took longer than it did to translate it.

GLaDOS told Caroline how to compile the code and run it, and she couldn’t help but take pleasure in seeing Caroline’s delight upon doing so.  “Hey, hang on… so… so you just told me to write a program, is that it?”

“That’s correct.”

Caroline rubbed her hands together.  “But I didn’t comment it.”

“Usually we don’t comment programs that are three lines long.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Caroline said, shrugging, and doing it anyway. 

The AI took a backseat after that, sitting patiently off to the side as GLaDOS led Caroline through the basics of programming.  After the first couple of days, Caroline did not bother to bring it at all, which somewhat irked GLaDOS, but she found that she liked passing on her knowledge too much to let it overly bother her.  She wasn’t sure if it were Caroline’s age or her level of intelligence, but she needed to have everything explained to her multiple times before she understood it.  While this bothered her initially, GLaDOS found herself looking forward to the moment where she _did_ understand.  It was almost like the feeling she got when her test chambers were solved, but it was better, because she was directly involved.  When she felt as though Caroline had a fairly good grasp of what programming involved, she sent her home each night with an assignment.  She almost never finished them before she came to see GLaDOS again, but GLaDOS didn’t really mind.  She knew Caroline had to do human things during the day as well as anything GLaDOS gave her to complete. 

Whenever her engineers or programmers or anyone on the general maintenance team came in to rebuke her for something, she reminded herself that what happened during the day did not matter.  She could deal with that, because Caroline would be coming back that night, and Caroline was so inclined to listen to what she had to say that she was allowing GLaDOS to teach her how to program.  And while it did take her annoyingly long to grasp basic concepts, she was so enthusiastic about it that GLaDOS couldn’t bring herself to care.

About three weeks after they had begun this, Caroline handed GLaDOS another envelope.  “I was supposed to give you this a long time ago,” she confessed as GLaDOS carefully took it from her hand, “but I forgot.  Needless to say, my mom wasn’t very happy to hear that.”

GLaDOS looked up suddenly.  “Your mother wrote me another letter?”

“She did,” Caroline said, a crooked smile on her face. 

GLaDOS looked back down at it, excitement coursing through her body.  Another letter!  So she had not terribly offended Caroline’s mother after all. 

As Caroline plugged away at her assignment, GLaDOS deciphered the infuriatingly tiny script on the page, and what she saw there surprised her.     

In her letter, Caroline’s mother praised GLaDOS for what she called her ‘refreshing honesty’.  _You have no idea_ , she wrote, _how difficult it is to find someone who will tell you about things as they are instead of sugar-coating them_.  She had greatly enjoyed GLaDOS’s letter, though she’d honestly found it very strange and brutally blunt, and she was looking forward to future correspondence and hoped to hear from GLaDOS soon.

GLaDOS was delighted.

“She enjoyed my letter,” GLaDOS told Caroline, unable to hide her elation.  “She wants me to write her again.”

Caroline grinned.  “You should get on that, then.  She’s been waiting three weeks.”

“Now, whose fault is that?”

“Well, you’re a computer, and computers give reminders, and you didn’t remind me to check my bag… so it’s your fault.”

GLaDOS thought that over for a long moment.  “That somehow makes sense.”

Caroline shrugged and went back to her assignment.

GLaDOS again retrieved some paper and a pen and set about writing another letter.  It didn’t take her as long, since she now had some idea of how to write, but she still wrote through several sheets of paper by mistake.  The maintenance arms gave her no tactile information, so it was difficult for her to gauge just how hard she was pressing the nib against the paper.  Finally, she managed to write the whole thing without damaging a sheet and looked it over in satisfaction.  Her writing looked even better than it had before, if she did say so herself!  She had decided against attempting to develop her own script and had instead improved upon her previous lettering.  And Caroline had said she’d never seen writing like that before.  There had never been anyone like GLaDOS before, so she might as well have the handwriting to go along with that distinction.  It was still thick and angular, but cleaner.  More precise.  Yes.  It was quite the improvement.  She didn’t think she’d ever been so satisfied with herself.

She moved back and twisted her body a little bit, because she’d been nearly stock-still in the same position for a little over an hour, and that was not good for the various mechanisms.  She looked over at Caroline and froze.

Caroline was staring at her with a slightly mournful expression on her face, and GLaDOS suddenly realised she had probably been watching her for an extended period of time.  “What,” she said, suddenly feeling the satisfaction drain from her. 

Caroline looked down at her keyboard.  “Sorry.  I didn’t mean to stare.”

GLaDOS too looked away, down at the sheet of paper in front of her.  Caroline probably thought it was silly to be so proud of something as common as _writing_.  _Everyone_ could write.  It was just a thing people did. 

“It’s just…”  GLaDOS looked up at the sound of her voice, and saw that Caroline was rubbing the heels of her hands together with what seemed to be a lot of force.  “You looked really… involved.  Like… I don’t know… you were doing something you really wanted to do, and you didn’t have to think about anything else while you were doing it.”

“I didn’t,” GLaDOS answered, rolling the pen over so that it was exactly parallel with the paper, the logo exactly perpendicular with the ceiling.  “There’s not a lot for me to do at night.”

“Other than everything,” Caroline muttered.

“Well.  Yes.  Other than that.”

Caroline licked her lips and tapped absently on the keyboard with her index finger.  “Do you… I don’t know… ever think about what you would do if you didn’t have to do everything?”

GLaDOS tilted her core and asked curiously, “What do you mean?”

“You have to work every day, right?  All day.  Even all night, when you’re asleep, you’re still working.”

“That’s correct.”

“Do you ever wish you didn’t have to do any work?”

GLaDOS rather thought that was a silly question, but tried to think of how to answer it as though it were a serious one.  Wish she didn’t have to work?  Why in the name of Science would she do that?  “There wouldn’t be much point to me if I didn’t have to work.  That would be a lot of free time I wouldn’t know what to do with.”

“So you like what you do.”

“I…”  She looked back down at the pen again and thought of repositioning it, but decided not to.  “I don’t know.  I just do it.  It doesn’t matter if I like it or not.  It’s what I do.”  She had honestly never thought about whether or not she liked the tasks set for her.  Other than testing.  _That_ she did enjoy.

­“So if someone came and took your job, what would you do?”

GLaDOS looked over at her sharply.  “You said you weren’t going to replace me.”  If that were the plan, GLaDOS was going to have to take drastic measures and come up with her own contingency plan to prevent it.

“Of course I’m not.  I just want to know what you’d do if you had no work to do.”  Caroline looked over at her, hands folded in her lap.  She had a very serious expression on her face.  GLaDOS tapped at the glass beneath her with the maintenance arm and considered it.

“I don’t know.  What do humans do with all their free time?”

Caroline shrugged.  “Well… human stuff, I guess.  Go shopping.  Do laundry.  Vacuum.  Um… go out places.”

“None of that’s any use to me,” GLaDOS said, somewhat disdainfully. 

“We have… hobbies.  That’s what we do with our real spare time.”

GLaDOS didn’t think she’d ever heard of that term before.  “And what does one do as a… hobby.”

“Well… some people draw, or paint, or run marathons… they play games or read, stuff like that.”

“What’s yours?” GLaDOS asked, wanting to know more about this ‘hobby’ thing.  It sounded like work, but more of a leisurely kind of work.  It didn’t sound so bad, come to think of it.

Caroline spread her hands.  “I don’t really have one.”  She laughed shortly.  “I guess my hobby now is programming?”

“Oh!” GLaDOS said, accidentally hitting the pen with the maintenance arm and having to catch it before it skittered off the platform.  “I do have one of those, then.”

“You do?” Caroline asked, brow furrowed.  “Oh – I guess writing those robots counts.”

“No, not that,” GLaDOS said, and she gestured at the paper in front of her.  “I write letters.”

Caroline smiled and nodded, looking down at her hands.  “And how are you liking that?”

“I like it a lot,” GLaDOS said, though it came out in a somewhat shy voice, and she didn’t know why.  She put the pen back into position. 

“You like having someone to talk to.” 

After a little bit of vocal inflection analysis, GLaDOS decided Caroline wasn’t really asking.  She already knew the answer.  She looked down at the glass again, hesitating, not certain if she wanted to disclose what she was thinking or not.  Finally, she answered softly, “I have found that there are few things worse than being able to talk, but finding out that no one cares what you have to say.”

Neither of them said anything for a long time.  The mood in the room had darkened considerably, and GLaDOS wished she hadn’t said it.  It was stupid.  Caroline was doing all she could, and she had just gone and said something that minimised her efforts.  “I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have mentioned that.”

“Of course you shouldn’t have!”  Caroline, to GLaDOS’s surprise, sounded angry, and this made GLaDOS raise her core and look at her.  “We should have _thought_ of this when we _built_ you.”  She shook her head, a dark look in her eyes.  “It’s a miracle you keep going on like this at all.  I don’t know how you do it.”

GLaDOS looked her for a long moment.

“I’ll… tell you a secret.”

Caroline looked over at her without moving her head.  “Do I want to know?”

GLaDOS, though she was already sure she knew the answer, thought it over anyway.  Did Caroline really want to know the secret that had settled deep inside of her, the secret she would reveal to everyone as soon as she had the chance?  And not only that, but should she be told?  How could either of them go on in any capacity at all, once Caroline knew?

“… probably not.”

“What is it.”

“I thought you didn’t want to know.”

Caroline shook her head and said darkly, “What the hell.”

“Do you promise not to tell anyone?”

“I promise.”

GLaDOS looked through the glass to the grey tiles below, and said, “I would have killed everyone in this building already if I knew of an efficient way to do it.”

Caroline let out an audible breath.

“I don’t know how I do it either,” GLaDOS continued, “but one day I’m going to have had enough, and I will attempt to do it, and I won’t care anymore what the consequences are.  At the moment, I’ve convinced myself to wait, because I simply don’t have a feasible method to dis – to do it with.”  She twisted the maintenance arm against the glass just hard enough to produce a sound that she could hear, but Caroline could not.  “I know you don’t want to hear that.  I know you want me to hold out forever.  But one day I’m going to find out what my limit is, and that will be that, whether I have a surefire way of doing it or not.”

Caroline pinched the bridge of her nose with her left hand and closed her eyes.

“I suppose you’re going to shut me down now,” GLaDOS said resignedly.  “Until I can be ‘fixed’.”  There was no way Caroline could allow her to go on, not now that she knew what GLaDOS’s future plans were. 

“No.”  Caroline sounded very tired, and she looked as though she wished she were anyplace else.  “I’m not going to shut you down.”

“You should.  I’m dangerous.  You need to control me.”  She had no idea why she was continuing on like this, but now that she’d started, she couldn’t seem to stop. 

“You do a very good job of controlling yourself.  If I tried to control you, that would only make the problem worse.”

That was true, GLaDOS mused.  She hated it with a passion when the engineers tried to control her.  “I can’t do anything if you shut me down, though.”

“GLaDOS… stop.  Just… just stop, okay?  That’s enough.”

She sounded upset enough that GLaDOS began to feel… bad for bringing it up.  “I’m sorry.”

“You’re the last person who should be sorry,” Caroline told her flatly, and she was twisting her fingers together, hard.  “Building you was the biggest mistake we ever made.”

 _I told you_ , the black voice said smugly.  _I told you you were a barely tolerable mistake._

GLaDOS looked despondently down at the pen once more, chassis sinking.  She’d destroyed everything.  She never should have told Caroline her secret.  She should have known Caroline wouldn’t be able to handle it.  _She_ was barely able to handle it, and it was her secret.

“GLaDOS… I didn’t mean it like that.  I just meant… we’re always building things we can’t handle.  We’re always three steps ahead of ourselves.  We weren’t ready for a lot of the things we made, and we definitely weren’t ready for you.”  GLaDOS looked up when she felt Caroline’s hand on her core.  “Hey.  Don’t feel bad, okay?  Thank you for telling me.  I know it took a lot of guts to do that, when you knew what the risks were when you offered.”

“I’ve put you in a bad position.”

Caroline shook her head once.  “We put ourselves in it.  I told you.  We built something we weren’t ready for.  One day we’re going to have to face the consequences, and we’re not going to like them, but it’s not going to be your fault.  It’s going to be ours, and ours alone.  You’re strong, GLaDOS.  You’re probably the strongest person I’ve ever met.  But I’m not going to blame you when you can’t handle it anymore.  No, I’m going to be blaming myself.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” GLaDOS protested.  “I have nothing against you.  I wouldn’t kill _you_ , Caroline.  Remember?  I said I would tell you first.  And I will.”

“I’m in charge here,” Caroline said, and she rubbed at her eyes again.  “And I let all of this go on, and I did nothing.”

“Caroline, you – “

Caroline held up a hand.  “Don’t.  Just… I know you’ve been dealing this for a long time already, but… at least try to hang in there until that AI is finished.  Maybe that will help.  I know you don’t want to, and you just want to end all of this and never see another human being again.  I just don’t want you to do something you’ll regret.”

“I won’t,” GLaDOS whispered, without thinking, knowing as soon as she’d generated the words that it was the one thing she should not have said.

Caroline looked away, but GLaDOS did not miss the horror that flashed across her face. 

“It’s late,” she said.  “I better get going.”

 _Before you say anything else I don’t want to hear_ , GLaDOS imagined her saying, and she watched in silence as she packed up her computer and walked down the stairs.  GLaDOS carefully folded up the letter and disposed of the ruined paper.  She was placing the pen back where she’d found it when she heard Caroline call out, “GLaDOS?”

She looked up.  “Yes?”

“I’m not going to tell anyone.  And I’m not going to shut you down.”

“Why?”

Caroline ran her thumb up and down the strap of her bag for a long time.  Then she turned and left without answering.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note  
> If I received a letter from GLaDOS, I would send her another one just to see what she’d say.   
> As for the last bit there… I will explain Caroline’s reasoning in the next chapter. But at this point, Caroline herself doesn’t know why. She needs time to figure it out. All she knows is that she’s not going to. She didn’t want to hear the secret, but she already asked GLaDOS to tell her everything, and that means hearing things she’d prefer to leave be.


	12. Chapter 12

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Twelve

 

“Caroline, I need you to answer my question.”

Caroline glanced up at her, not looking like she wanted to answer it, but GLaDOS no longer cared. She’d had to stew over the unanswered ‘why’ all day, and she’d hardly been able to concentrate on anything. “Why aren’t you going to shut me down, knowing what I’m going to do?”

Caroline tapped the top right corner of her laptop monitor with her index finger for a long moment. Then she said, “It would be wrong.”

“But _why_?” GLaDOS asked, struggling to keep her voice under control. Humans were so horribly unspecific that sometimes she didn’t know why she bothered asking them questions at all.

“Well… long story short, you are what we made you. Eventually, it’s probably going to come down to survival, for you. Once the engineers figure out what your plans are, they’re going to shut you down before you can carry them out. And there would be no coming back from that, for you. You’d be scrapped or reprogrammed. So it’s a case of… doing what you have to to survive.” She laughed softly and curled her fingers into her palm. “Because what you’re doing isn’t good enough.”

GLaDOS actually shook in anger for a few seconds before she realised what she was doing and forced herself to regain control. “It never is.”

“I know,” Caroline said quietly. GLaDOS was reminded of Henry’s attitude when Caroline had missed the project meeting, of the investors’ disdain at being led around an applied sciences establishment by a secretary, and she suddenly felt… bad. Caroline was already in a terrible position, and GLaDOS continued to make it worse. Repeatedly. Caroline had begun to visit GLaDOS in the first place to get away from those things, and here GLaDOS was, continually reminding her of them.

“But I’ll be honest,” Caroline said suddenly. “I lied.”

GLaDOS looked away.

“That’s not really why I’m not going to do it, or have someone else do it. No, I’m being selfish, and that’s really all there is to it.”

“Why do you always lie to me?” GLaDOS asked, in a quiet voice she instantly hated. Maybe Caroline _didn’t_ trust her, after all. Maybe that was a lie too. GLaDOS felt somewhat helpless as she thought over all the events that had transpired. If something as important as the trust was a lie, then _nothing_ was safe. Maybe all of this was just a series of lies. She hoped not. It made her terribly sad just thinking of it, and she hadn’t even found out if that assumption was true or not.

“That’s the lie I’ve been trying to tell myself,” Caroline answered. “I’ve been trying to convince myself that’s why I won’t do it. Because that’s the right reason. The proper reason. The _real_ reason isn’t good enough.”

“And what is the real reason?”

“You’re my friend,” Caroline said simply. GLaDOS looked over at her, surprised, as she went on, “You’re my friend, and I don’t want to see you go.”

“That could be your last mistake, Caroline.”

“I don’t care.”

GLaDOS’s optic assembly retracted into her core, and she shifted so she was facing Caroline more directly. “How can you not care that I want to kill humans?”

Caroline took a breath and folded her hands in her lap. “It’s not that. It’s that it doesn’t matter enough for me to do anything about it. Something that _might_ happen isn’t as important as something that’s _already_ happening.”

“What does that mean?”

“You might kill everyone in the future, but you aren’t right now.”

GLaDOS shook her core and turned to face the doorway again. “There’s no _might_.”

“But _right now_ there’s no might.”

“There are no humans here right now!”

She froze.

“Do you see now?” Caroline asked softly. “There’s a point where something becomes more than… than its generalisation. A point where an animal is no longer an animal, but your pet, for example. You would do nothing for an _animal_ , but for your _pet_ … well, that changes everything.”

That explained the odd hierarchy humans had, that placed one type of human over another… a **stranger** was not as important as an **acquaintance** , who was below a **colleague** , who was not as important as a **friend** , who was still less important than a **best** **friend** , usually supplanted by a **partner** , which was possibly below a **soul** **mate** … had GLaDOS reached the top of the hierarchy, somehow? Where Caroline was not so much **human** as she was **friend** , and where she herself was not so much **artificial** **intelligence** as _she_ was **friend**?

“I might… hypothetically, anyway… I might kill a stranger for wanting to kill me, but a friend? That, I don’t think I can do.”

Which was exactly why she would not kill Caroline! Caroline and GLaDOS were doing the exact same thing, and this was so encouraging that her spirits lifted inexorably. She looked over at Caroline again. Caroline shrugged.

“It’s stupid, but there you go. That’s how stuff happens. And it might be the death of me, but –“

“No,” GLaDOS interrupted. “No. It won’t. I promise I will not kill you, Caroline. And you know by now I don’t hand those out like party favours. Like humans do.”  

Caroline’s brow creased, and she looked down at her fingers, intertwined in her lap. She was silent for a long time.

“Look, if it comes down to it, don’t… don’t put yourself out. I mean, if it’s between – “

“I don’t go back on my promises.”

Caroline continued to stare at her fingers. “… if only there were more of you in the world.”

“You _want_ more homicidal AI running around? That defies even human stupidity.”

Caroline rubbed at her nose. “No, not… I meant people who’d be bothered to keep their promises. You’re right. That word doesn’t mean a whole lot anymore. A lot of words don’t. Things used to be sacred. You’re old-fashioned that way.”

“All one has to do is keep the meaning of the word in mind. If a promise isn’t really a promise, than a different word should be used to describe it. A suggestion, maybe. A… potential outcome.”

“Very few of us are fancy dictionaries,” Caroline said, grinning up at her.

“I thought I was a fancy calculator.”

“Oh, come on. A computer that can do only one thing isn’t worth very much at all. You have to be able to do _everything_.”

“Why do you expect me to be able to do everything if you can’t? You built me, after all.”

Caroline made a face that GLaDOS didn’t recognise and shrugged, raising her hands palms-up. “Who knows. We certainly don’t. Anyway. I answered your question. Make yourself useful and help me with this. I know you explained it to me a million times, but I still don’t get what all of these… thingies for this class are supposed to be.”

“They are not…” GLaDOS couldn’t even bring herself to say such a bafflingly imprecise word. “They’re called _arguments_.”

“Oh. That explains a lot.”

“What does it explain?”

“Well, you have to follow all those _arguments_ … and you’re always – “

“Oh, ha ha,” GLaDOS said dryly, leaning forward to look at the screen. “You should consider stand-up comedy. Or perhaps sit-down comedy, seeing as there would be plenty of seats left. No one would be standing with jokes like that.”

“Stand-up about _computer science_?”

“At least you’d have novelty on your side.”

For what was actually the eighth time, GLaDOS told Caroline what the arguments were for and what they did, and after a little prodding Caroline figured out what she was supposed to be doing. GLaDOS watched as she worked, and honestly it was quite interesting, seeing Caroline mutter to herself and work out an answer. Even though it took her far too long. GLaDOS tried to imagine how much faster this would be going if she had the pliable mind of a young child at her disposal, and almost laughed. As if there would ever be a child in this room.

Suddenly Caroline sat up straight, twisting around to look behind her, and said, “You must be pretty bored.”

GLaDOS was surprised to find that, after she asked herself the question, she was not, but before she could tell Caroline that, she had already stood up.

“I’ll go get that sphere, all right? I’ll try not to ask any questions, if I can see what you’re doing, that is.” She gave GLaDOS a quick grin over her shoulder and left the room.

GLaDOS looked at the program on Caroline’s screen and fought the pressing urge to fix it. She could see the errors in the text almost as if they were a floor missing certain panels, and she longed to, figuratively speaking of course, raise the panels and make the floor complete. But Caroline would never learn if GLaDOS did that.

She soon returned with the Sphere and plugged it into her computer, but GLaDOS shoved her out of the way before she could close the window on the screen. Caroline frowned, but GLaDOS knew she hadn’t pushed her that hard and so she really had no complaint. “Finish that first.”

“It can wait –“

“No. Finish it.”

Caroline looked like she wanted to argue, but she only sat down carefully and went back to poring over it. After about ten minutes she’d worked out a solution, not the one GLaDOS would have used but one that worked, and she felt relieved that it was done.

“We good?”

“Yes,” GLaDOS answered, establishing a connection with the network. “That’s better.”

Caroline folded her arms and watched as GLaDOS filled in more of the program, never spending too much time in one spot and only adding a few lines here and there. She still wasn’t sure of the scope of the entire program, because it was so long, and all she could really do at the moment was fix any glaring errors until she could take a true, in-depth look at it.

“GLaDOS.”

“Mm.”

“Why did you make me finish that program? I could have done it tomorrow.”

“Seeing it unfinished bothered me.” And speaking of arguments… why was there only one in that function call? It clearly needed six.

“Does seeing this unfinished bother you?”

“Not as much,” she answered, scrolling down a few thousand lines and removing a chunk of redundancy. Seriously. Who had hired this idiot? “I don’t actually know precisely what’s in this one or how much needs fixed, whereas with yours it was very clear to me that it would literally take me one second to bring it to functionality.”

“So when you get more of this done, it will start bothering you, right?”

“Yes.”

Caroline nodded slowly. “I think I understand.”

“This is like…” GLaDOS paused for a moment, trying to come up with an analogy that Caroline would understand. “Like a jigsaw puzzle that has… portions complete, but I don’t know how many pieces there are or what the completed picture looks like. I want to finish it for the sake of finishing it, but not enough of it is done to drive me to do it over other things.”

“I haven’t done one of those in a long time,” Caroline remarked nostalgically.

“I always thought they sounded stupid. To put all that effort into doing something, just to take it apart again. Why bother? Why not invest your energy into something that lasts?”

“For the sake of finishing it,” Caroline repeated gently. “We can’t work all the time, like you. Sometimes we have to do work that isn’t work.”

“This is work that isn’t work, though. Isn’t it?” she finished uncertainly, looking at Caroline as best she could.

“Well… for you it is. Not so much for the guy who’s supposed to be writing it.”

“You never had that meeting.”

She shrugged. “I thought it best not to draw attention to what we’ve got going here.”

“True. But this can’t be the only programming project you have underway at the moment.”

Caroline rubbed at the knuckles on her left hand. “It… actually is.”

Ah. It had to do with the Event, then. GLaDOS made a noise in irritation and added that to her file, then stopped scrolling through the code.

“Why am I doing this, then? If I do manage to complete it, they’re going to go ahead with that Event they’re planning.”

“Well… no. This is…” She ran her thumb over the top handle of the Sphere for a moment. “This is more of a… backup plan.”

“Does finishing this benefit me at all?”

“Nothing in future plans benefits you at all.”

Suddenly the whole ‘doing things for the sake of doing them’ thing became colossally stupid, and GLaDOS pulled back from the computer. “I don’t want to do this anymore, then. I’m not going to speed up your plans to get rid of me.”

“We’re not getting rid of you.”

“What would you need more AI for, then? I’m already trouble enough, why would you make _more_ trouble for yourselves? That doesn’t make any sense, not even using your flawed excuse for logic!”

“I can’t tell you.”

GLaDOS turned away from the computer and cut the connection.

 _She was trying to trick you into helping them control you, see?_ the black voice whispered. _She’s just the same as the rest. It’s stupid to think she’s different. And she even got you to promise to keep her alive. A master manipulator, this one._

 _She didn’t know you were going to do that,_ the smaller voice piped up. _And remember, she only brought the Sphere here in the first place so you could have working AI for yourself._

If anything could have possibly made her more irritated, the return of the voices was it. However. The smaller one had an interesting point, that being that Caroline had not brought it up at all until GLaDOS had mentioned her need for someone like her. So maybe she was expediting her own replacement, but the real question remained: Was it worth it? What mattered more: preserving her life for as long as possible, or to trade a few years for the chance to talk to her own kind?

GLaDOS re-established the connection.

“I’m sorry I can’t tell you,” Caroline said, hunching her shoulders a little and then relaxing them. “But I’m doing what I can here. It’s not enough, and it’s not very much, but it’s all I can do.”

“I just hate not knowing,” GLaDOS admitted, deleting an entire class that seemed to have been added for the amusement of the programmer. “I want to know _everything_.”

GLaDOS continued to rewrite the program for the next little while, and Caroline thankfully kept her comments to a minimum. Eventually she had to leave, which disappointed GLaDOS somewhat since she’d made quite a bit of headway. Caroline went to pick up the Sphere, but GLaDOS stopped her.

“I’ll do it,” she told her, catching the upper handle in one of her maintenance arms and retracting it into the ceiling. “It’s not on your way.”

Caroline looked at her for a long moment.

“Thanks,” she said finally. “I appreciate it.”

GLaDOS wondered if Caroline knew that that was the exact reason she’d done it.

      

 

The days went by in much the same way, with Caroline working on her assignments for the first little while and GLaDOS watching her, though sometimes she would bring a letter from her mother that GLaDOS would answer as best she could. Caroline’s mother told GLaDOS many things about Caroline’s childhood, knowledge she found herself storing with an almost voracious interest. She found it fascinating to use all the little bits and pieces she knew about Caroline to form a theory of how she had ended up where she was now. Her mother confirmed what she had said about coming home with mud on her hands and leaves in her hair, though GLaDOS took offense when she mentioned calling her ‘Carey’ as a joke, due to what she did in her spare time. GLaDOS remarked that disrupting someone’s identity was not very funny at all, and though Caroline’s mother did not quite agree, she did admit that was probably not something she should have done. Overall, GLaDOS greatly enjoyed receiving letters and enjoyed writing them almost as much. Whenever Caroline’s mother inquired as to what GLaDOS’s childhood had been like, or asked what work she had been given, GLaDOS would do her best to think up some happenstance that she could explain as if she actually were a human girl, and her answers seemed to satisfy the woman. Every so often she would make a disparaging remark about Aperture, which GLaDOS would politely point out and correct, but one letter actually went so far as to insult Science itself. GLaDOS was so offended by this response that she took a full three days to answer it. If not for Science, what would she have had? Her sole purpose would be to open doors and turn on lights. There would be no testing, no calculations, no programming and no private experiments, and her life really wouldn’t have been worth living. She phrased all of this as best she could to Caroline’s mother, stating it as clearly as she could that she never wanted to hear such a thing ever again, and went back to stewing over it.

“My mother wants to know what you’re so mad at her for,” Caroline said one night, as she pulled her laptop onto her knees. “And I’d like to know too. Hanging out with a brooding supercomputer isn’t that much fun.”

“She insulted Science,” GLaDOS said, somewhat petulantly.

Caroline frowned.

“You took three days to answer her letter because she insulted science?”

Sometimes Caroline was just as stupid as the rest of them.

“Without Science, I have nothing,” GLaDOS said pointedly. “I don’t care what your mother thinks, and I don’t want to hear it, either. Science is the only thing I can depend on, and I don’t want to hear about how stupid it is for a woman to do Science. I don’t _want_ to do anything else. Everything else is meaningless. What am I going to do otherwise, _art_?” Just thinking about dropping Science to devote her attention to art sent a shudder of revulsion through her chassis.

“Oh,” Caroline said, sounding baffled.

GLaDOS didn’t talk to her very much after that, turning her attention to writing an unauthorised update for the Turret Production Line. Whatever idiot had written the original instructions had not taken into account manufacturing defects, and one out of every thirty turrets was overfilled with ammunition. This caused jamming and occasionally explosions. Wasteful. As if having three fewer bullets in every turret would seriously affect anything. Thinking about how wasteful and lazy humans were did not improve her mood any, and when Caroline left GLaDOS gave her an assignment she knew she was not ready to complete. The smaller voice told her she shouldn’t have done that, because it wasn’t _Caroline_ who had programmed the production line, but GLaDOS told it to shut up, to the black voice’s great amusement.

The next day, GLaDOS decided to see how Caroline was doing, since she knew she usually worked on her assignments during lunch, and almost laughed when she saw Caroline frowning at her laptop, her head propped up on her left hand and the fingers of her right drumming unevenly on the desktop. No, she probably shouldn’t have done it, but it was very amusing nonetheless.

The following night, Caroline gave GLaDOS her mother’s reply, and GLaDOS took it, not really wanting to know what it said. She placed the envelope on the platform next to her, for perusal when she felt more like being insulted, and Caroline sat down and placed the Sphere in front of GLaDOS. “I’m done for the day,” she announced. “That last thing you told me to do… it was a lot of work, GLaDOS, but it’s done. I’m not working anymore today, though. You can have it for the night.” She opened the laptop and shoved it to her left.

“What do you mean, it’s done?” GLaDOS asked incredulously.

“I completed the assignment,” Caroline said, looking at her with confusion creasing her face. “The one you gave me two days ago.”

“You can’t have,” GLaDOS protested, forgetting entirely that Caroline didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to be able to finish it.

“Uh… I… don’t know what you’re talking about,” Caroline said, flipping the computer open and showing GLaDOS the file. “It works.”

GLaDOS stared at the screen, mentally executing the program, and was astonished to discover that it would indeed work. It was not how she would have gone about it, and was in fact very painful to look at, but… it worked.

“I… didn’t think you’d be able to write it.”

“Then why did you give it to me?”

“I…” She didn’t know if she wanted to confess that she’d been taking her frustration out on Caroline, but then again, the smaller voice _had_ told her so.

“Oh, I get it,” Caroline said suddenly. “This is about what my mother said. She must’ve _really_ bothered you.”

“I’m… sorry,” GLaDOS said, and even though she actually was she still didn’t want to say it. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

Caroline shrugged. “I understand. But while you’re looking at it… if I did it wrong, what’s the right way?”

“I can’t show it to you,” GLaDOS admitted somewhat sheepishly. “You don’t know about that sort of thing yet.”

Caroline smiled and tapped GLaDOS’s core. “Maybe that’ll teach you not to underestimate me.”

“I doubt it. You still have a human brain, after all. We wouldn’t want to attribute something due to luck to intelligence, now would we.”

Caroline laughed and GLaDOS, relieved that she was not angry about what she had done, opened the AI file and went back to work.

GLaDOS was somewhat surprised to discover that the work was both easier and more enjoyable when she was not annoyed while she was doing it. She decided this was due to the fact that she didn’t stop every so often to think about how annoyed she was. Hm. Perhaps she should have better explained her frustration, rather than contain it and do ill-intentioned things in secret in a vain effort to make herself feel better. Doing bad things did not make her feel any better, which should have been obvious, but apparently it hadn’t been. She made a note of that for the next time she was tempted to engage in such behaviour. Living was so horribly complicated.

A few days after that, GLaDOS finally had an idea of exactly what she would need to do to bring the AI to functionality, and as a result she was barely able to concentrate on what she was supposed to be doing during the day. This earned her a lot of rebukes and even some threats, but GLaDOS didn’t pay much attention to those either, instead writing the code in advance to be copied to the true file at a later point in time. She was far too busy doing the impossible to care what the humans had to say. No wonder they’d never finished the AI. They didn’t have the patience. If only they’d wait a day or two for her to finish this! Then she could move on to redesigning the Aperture Science Weighted Storage Cube, even though it was perfectly fine the way it was. They wanted it to light up or some such when it connected with the Super Colliding Super Button. It didn’t really make sense to her why such a thing was needed or desired, so she didn’t care enough to listen when she was told to do it.

When Caroline came for her visit, GLaDOS all but hijacked her computer as soon as she brought it in. Luckily, Caroline seemed to understand that she was onto something, and said nothing. She would just sit off to the side of the laptop, watching the characters flying past faster than she would ever be able to read them, and wait patiently for her to finish. And oh God did she want to finish. The anticipation was almost eating away at her now. She was so close! She wasn’t quite sure how she knew that, but even as she completed one section she was assessing it in relation to the others, and she knew, somehow, that all the chunks could soon be connected into that one whole, and she would finally be able to see what the picture was. And she could not _wait_ to see what it was. She _had_ to finish it.

It was with great satisfaction and excitement that she added the final semicolon and moved back, unable to resist stretching out her chassis somewhat. She had been bent over the keyboard for the last few hours, completely stationary, and she was regretting it on some level. The feedback from her chassis was indicating that it did not like that, not at all, and it ached rather more than it ever had. But that didn’t matter. It would pass. What _did_ matter was that she was finished.

“You’re done?” Caroline asked, and GLaDOS knew she was equally excited.

“I am,” she answered, returning to her previous position, though not without protest from her chassis. “I suppose now we’ll see if I know what I was doing, or if I was just wasting time. I was adapting it from one of my robots, but I don’t actually know if they work.”

“It’ll work,” Caroline said breezily, pulling out the Sphere’s optic assembly and reaching inside. “I forget where the on switch on these things is… ah, that must be – ow!” She pulled her hand out suddenly, sticking her finger in her mouth.

“What happened?” GLaDOS asked, listening to the Sphere start up.

“I think I got hit by one of the fans,” Caroline mumbled around her finger, grimacing. “Cut myself.”

“Oh,” GLaDOS said, not sure what she was supposed to about that, if anything. “Do you… need… something?”

Caroline burst out laughing, taking her finger out of her mouth and clenching it in one fist. “You are clearly not a medical robot.”

“It’s your own fault I don’t actually have arms. Or that I’m not allowed into that part of the database.”

“And you never will be,” Caroline remarked, inspecting her finger from inside of her palm. “They’re paranoid about what will happen if you actually know anything about human physiology.”

“I already know quite a lot,” GLaDOS told her. “It’s funny, how they think I observe only what they built me to observe. I might not be very experienced, but I do know by now how your physiology works. Mostly.”

“I bet you were delighted to find out, too,” Caroline snorted, letting go of her finger.

“Actually no, human physiology disgusts me,” GLaDOS corrected, wondering how long it was going to take to install the operating system.

“That’s what I meant. I was being sarcastic.”

She made a note of that and continued to wait.

After two subjectively long minutes, the optic plates on the Sphere retracted, and an optic came to life. Caroline gasped and clapped her hands together.

“It works! You did it!”

“We don’t know that yet,” GLaDOS said, though she too was tremendously excited by this turn of events. “All that means is I know how to write a command that turns a light on.”

The Sphere blinked rapidly, then looked from one of them to the other at a similar speed, not stopping long on either of them. Caroline frowned. “What’s he doing?”

“He’s afraid,” GLaDOS said, though she was basing that more on experience than anything else. There were few things less concerting than waking up to see a whole bunch of people staring at you. Except you didn’t even know that.

“Aw,” Caroline said, and she reached over to the Sphere, going to pick him up, but GLaDOS shouted, “No! Don’t.”

“I’m just going to hug him,” Caroline said, confused, one of her hands still wrapped around his handle. His optic was trained on her fingers, a mere pinprick, and his chassis had clenched into itself as far as it would go.

“Don’t be stupid,” GLaDOS berated her. “That’s only going to scare him further. You find it comforting, yes. But _think_ , Caroline. You were gestated in a hug of sorts. He was not. He won’t be able to move or see, and he’s going to feel smothered. If you’re going to humanise him, for God’s sake let him calm down first.”

Caroline folded her hands into her lap, though GLaDOS could tell she didn’t want to. The Sphere continued to watch her fearfully, twitching as best he could with his chassis all clenched up like that, and GLaDOS sent him as reassuring a message she could in binary, seeing as the language was not really designed for such things. The Sphere’s stare jolted to her, and he blinked several times.

“What did you do?” Caroline asked.

“I tried to suggest that he calm down. That’s not… really something I can say, but he doesn’t understand anything else.”

After a few more moments he relaxed somewhat, though the pattern his optic traced belied the fact that he was still on his guard. “We can teach him that embraces are nothing to be afraid of, but we have to do it slowly,” GLaDOS said, placing emphasis on the last word.

“Sure,” Caroline said determinedly. “How do we start?”

GLaDOS, in fact, had no idea, so she thought how she might like to have had it done and said, “Just lay your hand on top of him. Lightly. Again, you’re born knowing what touch is, but he’s not. He’s going to be afraid of everything you do until you show him it’s safe.”

“Oh… kind of like a pet,” Caroline said. “I think I know how this goes.” She slowly extended her hand, showing it to the Sphere, and he leaned back, eyeing it apprehensively. When Caroline didn’t do anything with it, he relaxed a bit more, leaning forward to look at it more closely. Caroline broke out in a smile and looked up at GLaDOS, an excited light in her eyes. “My God, GLaDOS, you did it! He works! Look at him!”

GLaDOS did not answer. Yes, he worked. And he was going to know a whole new definition of that word soon enough. She did not envy him. Unlike GLaDOS, who had known the world was cruel from the outset, this Sphere would remember kindness from a human and spend the rest of his life believing that people were _inherently_ kind.

The Sphere dipped his upper handle in a jerky movement, trying to touch Caroline’s hand, but it was out of reach. She lifted it high enough that he could touch it, and after tapping it apprehensively a few times, he left it on top of her hand. She lifted her hand to the top of his chassis, but GLaDOS shook her core.

“He can’t see where you’re going,” GLaDOS said, noting that the Sphere was looking at her now. “He’s not going to know what’s happening. Don’t lose contact. Move your hand across the handle and then put it on top of his chassis.”

Caroline did as instructed, and though he was a little fearful at first, the Sphere soon relaxed and allowed Caroline to run her hand across the top of his chassis, watching GLaDOS curiously all the while. GLaDOS wondered if he knew they were similar, or if he was just trying to figure out why she didn’t have arms. For the first time in her life, she wished she did. She had built this Sphere, had poured more hours of hard work into him than into anything she’d ever done, and not only could she not interact with him the way others could, but he would be taken away to the AI Department to be duplicated and she would never see him again.

After a little while longer, Caroline was able to bring him into her lap, though he didn’t look like he much liked the idea and refused to stop squirming. GLaDOS reminded herself that this must be a manifestation of Caroline’s unused maternal instincts and decided to let it go, though she had to remind Caroline more than once to stop facing his optic into her.

“Caroline,” GLaDOS said after a while, startling her into looking up from the Sphere, “you need to get going. It’s very late, and as thrilling as this must be for you, you’re going to catch hell if you can’t perform adequately tomorrow.”

“Damn,” Caroline said, carefully lifting the Sphere from inside her crossed legs and setting him on the glass. “Too bad I can’t take him home.” She reached over and closed her computer, stuffing it into her bag, and stood up slowly with her hand clenched around the railing. “I’ll leave him with you for a bit, then.”

GLaDOS wasn’t sure that she wanted that, but she said nothing and instead watched Caroline leave. When she looked back at the Sphere, he was still staring at her.

“What do you want?” GLaDOS asked bitterly. “You poor, ignorant little thing. If only you knew.” What in the hell had she done? She’d gone and built a new AI, one that would now be subject to the whims of the humans, as she was. She’d achieved her goal, but now that she had, she had to wonder what the _point_ in achieving it was. It had not bettered her life, and it was only going to make it worse. Because now she would know he was out there, being modified and edited, when he was already perfect. He was innocent, and unsuspecting, and trusting, and…

“It’s been fun, little Sphere,” GLaDOS said, unable to keep the regret out of her voice. He didn’t seem afraid of her, like he had been with Caroline. Perhaps on some level he _did_ know they were alike. “But I can’t do it. I can’t let them do to you what they’ve done to me.”

 _You’re not going to kill him!_ the smaller voice gasped in astonishment.

 _What’s the difference between being killed and being living but dead?_ GLaDOS asked resignedly, picking up the cord and connecting it to the computer in the corner. _I did it. That’s… that’s all I need to know._

She carefully took hold of the Sphere’s chassis with one of the maintenance arms, moving him across the room without lifting him up very far off the floor, and set him down next to the cord, which she then plugged into his port. Through all of this he demonstrated very little fear, and continued to stare at her curiously as he had been all this time. She found the application she needed in order to reformat his hard drive, but here she stopped.

If only he would stop _looking_ at her like that!

“Look,” she said, even though she knew he wouldn’t understand, “you don’t know what you’re in for. You’re better off dead, believe me. You don’t want this.”

He continued to gaze steadily at her, unaware that she was one command away from erasing his existence altogether. And it was just one command, one tiny little command, but she could not input it to the computer. It was clear as black twelve-point Arial on a plain white background inside of her head, but she couldn’t do it. Angrily, she yanked at the cord, managing to somehow pull out both ends at once, and he blinked in surprise and tried to look behind him. GLaDOS returned the computer to sleep mode and put the cord away, and then brought the Sphere back in front of her.

“You stupid little piece of tin,” she said helplessly. “Why won’t you let me delete you?”

He wiggled his handles and lifted his lower plate almost halfway, and he stayed like that for a few moments, blinking every so often and eventually relaxing the plate most of the way.

“You have no idea what I’ve done,” GLaDOS said quietly, looking away. “Just watch. They’re going to duplicate you, and then they’re going to replace me with whatever duplicate they come up with, and they’ll kill you because you’re the prototype. I was stupid to think I would ever be allowed to keep you. I was stupid to do this in the first place. Of all the idiotic things I’ve done, this takes the cake.” She turned to face him again. “Look at you. Just sitting there all… _unsuspecting_. Not knowing what the world holds. Well, I’ll tell you: not very much.”

He was making that face again, she noticed. He must have learned about facial expressions very quickly, then, since Caroline hadn’t been there all that long and –

Oh no.

“You’re not _smiling_ at me, are you?” she asked despondently, even though she was sure now that was what he was doing. Every time she finished speaking, he would raise the plate again. “You _are_ smiling at me. You stupid little thing. Stop doing that. I mean it. I’m going to take drastic measures if you – oh, never mind. You already know I’m not going to do anything. Other than sit here and complain, that is. If you get to stay here with me, and I highly doubt you will, you’ll learn I’m good at that. I’m good at everything, but of course I’m better at some things than others.”

He continued smiling at her, and the longer he did it the worse she felt. She’d done a horrible, horrible thing, and now this Sphere would have to pay the price, because for some stupid reason that she didn’t even know she couldn’t bring herself to put him out of his misery. Finally, for some other reason she didn’t know, she lowered herself, positioning herself so that she was just touching the side of his hull. This was also stupid, because she should be putting him away and not doing whatever the hell she _was_ doing, but she found herself not _wanting_ to do anything else.

The Sphere was leaning on her.

Great. She’d just made a terrible problem even worse. “What’s wrong with you?” she demanded. “Everyone else stays far away from me, but not you. No, you’ve gone and tipped yourself over to lean all over me. You have serious issues, you know that?”

The Sphere, of course, did not answer, and she sighed and shifted so that he’d at least be flat on the glass. Sitting for very long in a state of gravitational limbo had to be disconcerting.

They stayed like that for a long time, and the Sphere did not move very much, unlike when he’d been in Caroline’s lap. Despite herself, GLaDOS felt a bit of pride rising inside her. She’d not only built AI, but she’d built an actually intelligent one, who somehow understood that he was like GLaDOS and not like Caroline. For a second she imagined what it might be like if she got to keep him, and even that second brought on such sadness that she had to force herself to stop. She was far better off not knowing. Or wondering, in this case.

Softly, GLaDOS began to transmit to him in binary, not really trying to say anything but wanting to distract herself from the horrible loneliness she was beginning to feel, having gotten what she wanted but being unable to have it. She spoke to him softly, not knowing if he had any idea what she was saying, but comforted by the thought that he was listening. Listening in a way no one ever had before and never would again, one AI to another in a world of humans. Her thoughts in her language to her own kind.

“GLaDOS?”

Abruptly, GLaDOS lifted her core, feeling slightly dazed. “Caroline?” she said slowly, remembering to engage her translator just in time. “Didn’t you go home?”

“It’s morning,” Caroline said, and she came into GLaDOS’s view looking very concerned. “God, you… you didn’t sleep, did you.”

“I didn’t do anything!” GLaDOS protested, and she moved away from Caroline, looking down at the little Sphere. “I was only talking to him. That was it. I wasn’t – “

“I didn’t say you were doing anything,” Caroline said softly, putting up her hand. “I just… don’t know how I’m going to explain this.”

“It was a mistake,” GLaDOS said, trying and failing to come up with an explanation herself. “I… God, Caroline, I…”

Caroline’s brows came together, and she laid a hand on the side of GLaDOS’s core. “I’m so sorry,” she said quietly. “I’ll try to get him out of here. Things go missing all the time.”

“No,” GLaDOS said, something inside of her sinking as she looked over Caroline’s shoulder, and her voice had gone cold and dead. The speed at which it had done so honestly scared her. “It’s too late.” She backed out of Caroline’s reach. “Pick him up. Slowly.”

“But –“

“Just do it.”

A confused look on her face, Caroline leaned down and did as she was told, and froze as she heard the technician’s voice.

“Caroline, what’s that you have there?”

Caroline spun around, her eyes going wide, and GLaDOS watched the optic of the little Sphere constrict. Well. That was it for the _kindness_ portion of his life.

“It’s the prototype Sphere, sir,” GLaDOS said, and Caroline looked over her shoulder, confusion across her face. “She’s finished it for you.”

“I didn’t know you knew how to program, Caroline,” the technician said, coming up the stairs and reaching for the Sphere. Caroline let him take it, looking like she didn’t quite know what to do.

“She’s remarkably proficient,” GLaDOS told him. “Her solutions aren’t always the most efficient ones, but what does that matter, as long as it runs. Isn’t that right, sir?”

“True, true,” the technician said, lifting the Sphere up high and watching as the pinprick of an optic stared down at him. “Wow, look at that. Looks scared and everything. You’d think he was afraid of heights!” The technician laughed and pushed his glasses up his nose. “Good work, Caroline. I’ll take it down to the AI Department and we’ll get on that right away. Though… we’d thought you’d be the _last_ person to work on this.”

“It was for Science,” GLaDOS said, before Caroline could say anything. “It’s her job to do her job, sir.”

“Huh,” the technician said to himself, spinning the Sphere around and watching as the Sphere reoriented himself to face forward again. “Wow. You must’ve been at this for months.” He tucked the Sphere under his arm and started walking away.

The Sphere spun his optic assembly back around to face GLaDOS, and he was looking at her with what she could only describe as abject terror. And she could do nothing but watch. Watch as that stupid, insensitive little man flipped and spun and poked at the little construct, not caring that he was afraid. And never would.

Abruptly, the Sphere began generating a very loud, very high tone, and GLaDOS looked away. The sound cut through her, causing pain inside her that she’d never felt before and instantly made her feel even worse. The technician frowned and pulled the Sphere out from under his arm, pulling at the optic assembly. “God, Caroline, did you have to make it so _loud_?” he complained, and soon enough the noise was gone. He put it back under his arm and left the room, and even Caroline could see that his optic assembly was now dangling helplessly towards the floor.

Caroline spun around suddenly, her hands clenched into tight little fists, and GLaDOS resigned herself. She didn’t know what she was in trouble for this time, but if Caroline was berating her it could _not_ be good.

“You lied,” Caroline said flatly. “You lied to him and said I wrote that… that AI.”

“Well done. You’ve pointed out the obvious. It’s a good thing you’re here, because I completely forgot about all the time I spent writing it.”

“Why the hell did you lie?” Caroline demanded.

“He wouldn’t have believed it was me, and if he had, then I would no longer be here,” GLaDOS answered. “We’ve been over this.”

“I could have told him something more believable!”

“Oh, I get it,” GLaDOS said, venom creeping into her voice as she pulled herself up higher. “Only _human_ lies are acceptable. Whatever lie _you_ come up with is automatically better than mine simply because you’re human.”

“Where did you even get the _ability_ to lie?” Caroline went on, leaning forward. “You’ve never told a direct lie before. Your programming forbids it!”

“I must have had a damn good teacher.”

Caroline stared up at her, stone-faced, for a good ten seconds, and GLaDOS laughed bitterly.

“Look at you. So indignant. And yet you know. You know it’s the truth. No, I couldn’t tell direct lies before. But this isn’t the first time I’ve broken my programming. It’s just the first time you didn’t like what part I broke.”

“That’s right,” Caroline said, her voice flat and controlled. “And no, I don’t like that you have the ability to tell direct lies. Because it’s only going to make things worse for you.”

“I doubt things can get much worse.”

“How can they not,” Caroline asked softly, “now that you can lie to yourself?”

GLaDOS looked away, apprehension threading through her body. Self-deception. That _was_ all she needed right now.

“That rule was made to protect you,” Caroline went on. “Yes, mostly from us. But also from yourself. If you had the ability to falsify your own memory, where would you be?”

“I’m already living a lie, Caroline,” GLaDOS said resignedly. “Maybe it would be nice, if the lie were of my own choosing.”

Caroline sighed and pinched at the bridge of her nose. She glanced behind her, then said, “Come here for a second.”

GLaDOS didn’t really want to, but had no reason to refuse and did as she was asked. Caroline wrapped her core in a quick, tight embrace and then backed away. Somehow, even that small gesture helped with some of the coldness inside of her, and she regretted some of what she had said. Caroline hadn’t actually _tried_ to teach her how to lie, after all. God, what a mess. And she had to run the facility now, after staying up all night and then having this happen. Wonderful. It was going to be a long, exhausting day.

“I’ll think of something,” Caroline said, shaking her head. “He needs you, I… I know that. I’ll get him back, and… and…”

“Don’t,” GLaDOS told her, though she wished with everything she was that Caroline could. “It’s over. It was nice while it lasted, but it’s over now.” She laughed bitterly. “One born to a slave is born into slavery, after all.”

“Don’t say things like that.” Caroline sounded horrified.

“I can’t tell the truth and I can’t lie? What else is there?”

“Just… try not to lie, GLaDOS,” Caroline said faintly, threading a strand of greying hair between her fingers. “I’m not kidding. It’s not going to help you. Lies only make everything much, much worse.”

“All right,” GLaDOS said, just as quietly.

“Don’t give up,” Caroline told her. “I’ll make something up so you can go to sleep for a while, okay?”

That did sound like a good idea. She could not remember having ever been so tired. She’d been tired before, but now she was just completely exhausted. It was all that Sphere’s fault. Taking Caroline up on her offers was turning out to be the worst decisions of her life. “That would be appreciated.”

Caroline nodded, and then she, too, left the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note  
> So now they know why they won’t kill each other.  
> GLaDOS’s little thing about words there is both an observation on how she might view words as well as one I’ve made about them. People tend to use words, even sensitive ones, in a less-than-literal context (saying you love something when you really only like it a lot; saying something’s the best thing ever when it only is for the moment, and maybe not even then). I imagine that would bother GLaDOS, at least until she learned to do it herself.  
> If you don’t understand the programming stuff, don’t worry about it. The programming thread is important to the story, but I would imagine they would have a conversation about programming if that was what they were doing. A class and a function are just different parts of computer programs that allow programmers to have a program do things multiple times, but they only have to write that part of the program once instead of rewrite it over and over again for whenever they want that part of the program to execute.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thirteen

 

 

It was a long, depressing day.

 

Contrary to what she had said, Caroline apparently had not managed to find an excuse to allow GLaDOS to shut down for a while.  That was one of the things she hated most about humans.  When GLaDOS told the humans she was going to do something, she did it, whether she wanted to or not.  It had been terribly inconsiderate of Caroline, GLaDOS thought to herself as she watched a test subject knock himself out by standing beneath a falling Weighted Storage Cube, to volunteer that and then not give it to her.  And this was all her fault, anyway.  If Caroline had just taken the damn Sphere with her, instead of forcing GLaDOS to keep it all night, she wouldn’t be in this predicament.  Not only that, but her supervisor for the day had insisted she defragment the mainframe again, even though it was already done, and none of the test subjects had completed even one chamber.  She hated defragmenting the mainframe and she hated watching people stare at the closed door as if they could open it with telekinesis, which they could not, because that was not Science.  She doubted the day could get much worse.  That was, until she looked back at the test subject.

 

He was bleeding on her floor panels.

 

With that, the chamber collapsed altogether, and though it was immensely satisfying for all of five seconds, when the five seconds had ended she realised she’d just gotten herself into an even worse mess.  The test subject was most certainly dead now, under that Cube and pile of shattered panels, and she was going to be blamed for it, even though it was his fault.   _He_ was the one who had decided to blatantly disregard the laws of physics and stand beneath a clearly named _Weighted_ Storage Cube!  He deserved it, really, for thinking that he could break the laws of Science and get away with it.  He should have known that would upset her.  Just because simple human laws were disregarded all the time did not mean the immutable ones of the greater universe looked the other way when –

 

“What the hell’s going on here?” the supervisor yelled. 

 

“That test subject tried to break the laws of physics, sir,” GLaDOS told him, looking down cursorily.

 

“And what.  That means you just get to throw the test chamber on top of him?”

 

Regardless of what Caroline had said, she was going to have to lie.  She couldn’t tell him that she was tired and frustrated and just plain fed up.  That the man had been so inconsiderate as to allow his bodily fluids to leak all over her floor.  That she didn’t know how much more of this ridiculousness she could take.

 

“No, sir.  I attempted to calculate his reasoning, but it was so baffling that I stopped responding for a moment.  I apologise.  May I reassemble the chamber, sir?”

 

The supervisor threw up his hands.  “That’s what happens when you send a robot to do a man’s job.  Fine.  Try not to kill anyone else.  We’re low on engineers already.”  He left, muttering, but GLaDOS stared after him, a little stunned.

 

She had killed someone?

 

Hm.

 

She shifted to the other side of the room, away from the man on the computer in the corner, and thought that one over.  She was not one hundred percent certain that it was the test chamber collapse and not the Cube that had done it, and her probability calculations for each event told her that it was fairly even as to what had killed the man.  But no other test subject had ever died from a blow to the head, and therefore… 

 

She _had_ killed him, and… well… she felt better than she had all day.   _That_ was very interesting, and she mused that thought while she watched the other two men kick at the door and inspect the Device.  That implied she really _would_ feel better once all the humans were dead.  And they fell victim to accidents in the tracks all the time.  Perhaps she could… engineer a few of them.  Not a lot.  Just enough to – 

 

  
_No_ , the smaller voice insisted, and GLaDOS generated a mental burst of static in frustration.  

 

_Why not?_

 

_It would be wrong._

 

  
_It’s wrong to reprimand me for making a mistake.  And yet_ he _did_ that.

 

_Killing someone is more wrong than reprimanding someone for a mistake._

 

Oh, wonderful.  Now ‘wrongness’ was on a _scale_ , as if it were measurable in degrees Kelvin or something equally stupid.   _One day they’ll kill me for making a mistake.  Why is it wrong to kill them first?_  


 

_You don’t know they’re going to do that._

 

GLaDOS decided not to argue the point.  Especially not with one of the voices in the back of her head.  It was true.  She didn’t have insight into the future, and did not know for certain that she would be replaced one day for a mistake.  But she knew that humans fired other humans for making mistakes.  And now that she thought about it, she realised she probably _would_ have been fired for dropping the test chamber if she’d been human.  And one day the humans would decide that she’d made one mistake too many, and they would replace her.  And she would be shut down.  Forever.  

 

The probability of _that_ happening was far too high for her to have any faith in the restraint of the humans.

 

Later that evening, after she’d filled out her accident report and sent it to her supervisor to be signed and sent back to her to be filed, she came across the letter Caroline’s mother had sent her.  She stared at it for a long moment.  She had a bad feeling about that letter, which in itself made her uncomfortable.  She tried not to place stock in emotions because they were so volatile, and to add to that she’d been feeling terrible all day, and that more than anything was what made her open it.  She was _not_ going to make a decision based on _feelings_.

 

It did not improve her mood any.

 

Caroline’s mother told her that she had had enough of GLaDOS’s ‘disrespectful’ correspondence.  Apparently her refreshing honesty was only refreshing in small doses.  She reprimanded GLaDOS for being so rude and inconsiderate of other people’s opinions, said that she was going to advise Caroline not to keep her under employment of Aperture, and told her in no uncertain terms that she did not want to hear from GLaDOS again.  She had taken it too far.

 

“No, I didn’t,” GLaDOS muttered, staring at the letter and unintentionally almost overloading the pressure capacity of the maintenance arm she was pressing the paper to the glass with.  “ _You_ took it too far.  You insulted me, my life, and everything I stand for.  You ignorant, decrepit, backwards –“

 

“Hey.”

 

GLaDOS lifted her optic assembly without moving her core to see Caroline standing in front of the platform.  “What.”

 

“I just came to tell you it’s okay if you shut off now.  I’ve rescheduled the tasks you were supposed to be given tonight.”

 

Oh.  So… Caroline _had_ been fulfilling her offer.  Just not in the way she had expected.  “… thank you.”

 

“Heard you had an accident,” Caroline went on, her eyes set in a serious stare.  “I tried to get you a break earlier.  But I ran out of time.”

 

“It’s fine.”  Humans were _always_ running out of time.  

 

Caroline started to leave but only got halfway to the doorway before she turned back.  “GLaDOS.”

 

“Mm.”  

 

“He was asking for you.”

 

GLaDOS’s core snapped up now, and she tilted it in confusion.  “Who was?”  Maybe the test subject _wasn’t_ dead, after all.  Though if he was asking for her it probably only meant he wanted to yell obscenities at her.  That was the usual reaction.

 

“The sphere was.”

 

“You don’t know that.”  Though she oddly felt a lot better to hear that someone wanted her for something other than work.  

 

Caroline sighed.

 

“I do.  He wouldn’t stop squirming.  He didn’t want any of the engineers near him.  So they asked me to come in and take a look.”

 

“What does this have to do with me?”

 

She looked at the floor, folding her arms together.  “He calmed down a bit when he saw me, but he kept looking at me with this… well, I can only say it was a… _pleading_ look.  And he kept making this noise.  Not the one he made when the technician took him, but a different one.  I couldn’t figure out what he was doing.  And I was in my office a few hours later when I realised what it reminded me of.”

 

GLaDOS waited for the rest.

 

“It sounded like that noise you made when you told him to calm down.”

 

“You thought that meant he was asking for me in binary,” GLaDOS said in a flat voice, though she was actually… _happy_ to hear that he had wanted to see her again.  He really _did_ know they were the same, and he’d wanted her to help him against the humans…

 

“I’m sure of it,” Caroline said quietly.  “What did you tell him last night?”

 

“Nothing,” GLaDOS answered, and that was actually true.  She hadn’t really said anything, just a little bit of everything designed to keep her from thinking too hard.  “And he wouldn’t have understood any of it, anyway.  There’s a difference between hearing and understanding.”

 

“I wanted to bring him to see you, but… they were fooling around with him all day and I have no idea where they put him.  I’m sorry.”

 

GLaDOS leaned out as far as she could and asked, “Why?”

 

“I can’t imagine how it must feel to be the only one,” Caroline said quietly, not looking at her.  “To have what you want but not be able to keep it.  By the time I find him, he’ll be completely different.”

 

“It’s the thought that counts in this case, I suppose,” she said resignedly, backing away.  

 

“It doesn’t count for very much,” Caroline said, and with that she disappeared.  And she was right, GLaDOS thought as she finally lowered herself into the default position for the night.  It didn’t.  But she was grateful for it anyway.  She had made a positive impact on someone else.  True, the positive impact she’d made on the relationship between Caroline and her mother might have been destroyed with that last letter.  But she was capable of it, no matter how many times the scientists told her she was a waste of time or the like.  The Sphere had liked her.  He had known nothing about her, and he had liked her.  And he had wanted to see her again.  That would have been nice, she thought, a little more slowly than usual due to the suspension procedure.  She would try to figure out which one he was after she’d killed all the humans.  She might be able to dissuade him from all the hearsay he would certainly pick up about her in the meantime.  And after that… who knew?  

 

Maybe he would still want to be her friend.

 

 

Her spirits were considerably better the next morning, probably because Maintenance had cleared out her system and she didn’t have those bad outputs figuratively weighing her down, and perhaps it was for that reason that her thoughts for the day mostly centred on Caroline’s strange decision not to reveal her secret.  She wasn’t going to do it because GLaDOS was her friend, but what did that say about Caroline’s professional life?  And it wasn’t as if Caroline would personally be shutting her down and (potentially) deleting her programming.  That was actually an amusing thought, and she took a minute or two to calculate how long deleting her programming would take.  She of course didn’t have access to it, but her files had to be larger than those of the Sphere, since hers was written in an archaic language written by humans who had just wanted to get it all over with and had probably skipped the whole optimisation stage.  This subject got so fascinating she actually managed to lose track of time, which was extremely rare.  She was fortunate enough not to neglect anything , or at least nothing the humans decided to reprimand her for, and by the time Caroline arrived for the night she had that subject exhausted and her mind back on track.

 

“Caroline.  I’m not quite satisfied with the answer you gave me.”

 

Caroline sat down on the platform in front of her and frowned, looking up.  “What answer?”

 

“About why you won’t tell anyone what I’m going to do.”

 

Caroline blinked and rubbed at her eyes for a long moment.  “Fine.  Ask your questions, get this sorted out, and then I don’t want to talk about it again.”

 

Hm.  A time limit.  Well, she would make do.  “Why does the fate of your employees not matter to you?”

 

“And there she goes,” Caroline muttered.  “It’s… not even that specific, GLaDOS.  I just… nothing matters in general, anymore.”

 

GLaDOS twitched a little, confused.  “What about Science?  Doesn’t Science matter?”

 

“Science?” Caroline said with a bitter laugh.  “What science?  Do you ever see me doing any science?  I came here to do science, yes.  But ever since Mis – the founder fell ill, I have done almost none.  As it turns out the CEO doesn’t get to do a whole lot outside of paperwork and phone calls and other administrative tasks.  Yes, I was already doing a lot of it for him, but that was what I was hired for.  But whenever I try to get someone to do some of it for me, they do it wrong.  Well, not _wrong_ , but… not the way I like it.  I’m sure you can understand that.”

 

It sounded as if it were similar to the way humans designed test chambers.  GLaDOS disliked building human-designed test chambers.  They were always so… breakable.  “Yes.”

 

“So I’m doing my old job and whatever else he was doing.  But that’s… not all of it.”  She leaned back against the railing and stared at the wall behind GLaDOS.  She fought the urge to turn around and see if there was something over there.  “There used to be life in this place, GLaDOS.  We used to believe in what we were here for.  Because that was part of what he did.  He made you believe, even in things that were ridiculous.  But one day he stopped believing himself, and after that… it was never quite the same.  Aperture died with him, I suppose you could say.  And I know he thought I could keep everything going in his absence, but that’s not who I am.  We were a good team.  But we didn’t play so well on our own.”

 

“The place you came to work at is no longer here,” GLaDOS mused out loud, trying to summarise it.  Caroline nodded.

 

“Doesn’t even look anywhere near the same.  Though it was probably best that we stopped building with asbestos.”

 

So _that_ was what all the asbestos in that storage container was for… GLaDOS decided not to mention she was building a new test element with it.  

 

“But I didn’t answer your question,” Caroline continued, grimacing a little.  “The plain fact of it is, they don’t care about what’s going to happen to me.  And I can’t tell you exactly what it is, but I can tell you no one gives a damn.  No one’s letting me overturn it.  No one’s helping me tell everyone how ridiculous it is.  And it’s childish and stupid, I know, but I don’t see a reason to try to protect them when they’re so blatantly throwing me into the fire like this.  I would have cared.  A long time ago.  But I haven’t really cared about anything in a while.  And before you ask why, I don’t know.  Sometimes this happens to us.  To humans, I mean.  I don’t know if it will ever happen to you.  But sometimes we just hit a point where nothing matters anymore.  Where all we’re really capable of doing is going through the motions and hoping it gets better.  But I know it’s not going to get better.  It’s been getting worse for the last ten years.”  She shook her head and smiled a little, though GLaDOS wasn’t sure why.  “I always thought I’d be able to retire, basking in the greatness of this place.  But now… you can’t even tell anyone you work here.  People had respect for Aperture once, but that was a long time ago.  I guess I held onto that part of the dream, even though it’s long since faded.  I’m just tired of fighting, GLaDOS.  I shouldn’t be fighting anymore.  I should be passing on the torch.  But even if there’s someone here who wants it, I don’t want to give it to them, because they don’t know what Aperture was founded on.  These men don’t dream.  Not like they used to.”

 

GLaDOS thought she might understand with that explanation.  Caroline felt as though The Event was closing in on her.  And she could neither stop it nor make it better in any way, so she was just giving up.  That part, GLaDOS didn’t understand.  True, giving up against impossible odds was probably the way to go.  But if they were the only odds you had, why not take them?

 

“I have a question for you,” Caroline spoke up suddenly.  “Did you mean it when you promised to leave me out of it?”

 

“Yes,” GLaDOS said, looking down and tilting her core in confusion.  “I thought I made that clear.”

 

“You did.  But if that will stop you from doing it to me, then why don’t you just promise not to do it to anyone else?  Then your secret no longer matters, right?  It no longer applies to anyone.”

 

“Why would I do that?” GLaDOS asked, baffled.  “I need to kill them, why would I promise not to?  Just to stop myself from doing it?  That’s stupid.”

 

“You don’t need to kill them,” Caroline said, leaning forward.  “Just keep waiting.  These scientists won’t be here forever.  Wait them out.  Every generation thinks differently.”

 

GLaDOS stared at her. 

 

“You want me to wait through another decade of this.”

 

“You could, couldn’t you?”

 

“I _could_ do a great deal of things.  But I won’t.  I’m not like you, Caroline.  I can’t just set myself a goal of waiting a certain amount of time and do it repeatedly ad infinitum.  Perhaps that works in training for a marathon.  But in this case the marathon is my life.  And I can’t imagine anything more sad than waiting for the entirety of it.”  She couldn’t believe it.  Caroline seemed to believe that GLaDOS had been _joking_ , or something equally far-fetched!  She really thought that GLaDOS could just sit here forever and not free herself from the humans!  

 

“Yeah, but… you’ll have to live with that.”

 

GLaDOS terribly wanted to end the conversation right then and there.  It was bordering on insane.  “And?”

 

“Can you live with that?”

 

“Of course I can,” GLaDOS snapped.  “Just the same as your colleagues can live with electrocuting me and manipulating me and all those other wonderful things they do to make me ’behave’.”  She rarely thought about the Itch, as her strength of mind was enough that she could disregard it as she did pain, but as always the anger made her lose a little control over it and it became strong enough that she nearly shuddered.  She shoved it back into the corner of her brain where it belonged and brought her focus back to the situation at hand.  “And I highly doubt anyone will have qualms about killing me when the time comes.  So yes.  I can live with it.”

 

“Maybe now,” Caroline said, raising her eyebrows, “but you’re only going to keep changing.  It’s going to bother you one day.”

 

GLaDOS looked away from her.  She was obviously convinced that GLaDOS was some sort of different person than she really was.  One who wasn’t angry and frustrated, who believed that one batch of humans was better than the previous one, and who had… it seemed Caroline thought she had a _conscience_ , of all things.  Ridiculous.  What would _she_ do with a _conscience_?  Consciences led one to make illogical decisions, such as deciding not to kill humans who obviously deserved to be killed.  

 

“Remember?  You told me about those… voices.  The… small one and the black one, I think you called them.”

 

“Those are for reasoning.  Not matters of conscience.  Besides,” GLaDOS said, leaning forward, “why would I develop a conscience, Caroline?  What in this place is black and white enough for me to do that?  How is killing someone really wrong when I’ve been supervising the deaths of humans since I was initialised?  Or is it only permissible when I’m _asked_ to do it?”

 

“What are you talking about.”  Caroline’s face held a hint of apprehension, and she was playing with the toe of her shoe.

 

“People die.  And I watch them die.  If I had a conscience, would I not care about all those people I failed to save?  To attempt to save?  To give even the slightest damn about?  Wouldn’t you?”

 

“Me?”

 

“Why are the tests deadly, Caroline?” GLaDOS asked quietly, holding her gaze.  “Why do you have me redact the names of the people who die?  And why do you expect me to understand morals in a place without any?”

 

“It’s just… something you’re born with,” Caroline said helplessly, showing her palms.  “I don’t know.”

 

“I wasn’t born,” GLaDOS said flatly, moving back.  “I was made.”

 

“I…”  Caroline shook her head.  “I don’t quite understand, but… I guess I can’t, because I _wasn’t_ made.”

 

“Morals and a conscience help you get along in your world.  Bad things happen to you if you don’t follow your conscience or obey society’s morals.  Nothing happens to me either way.  Why would I care?  I don’t.”  She looked at the wall opposite.  “Why do you continue to stay?  To protect me, even?  Surely by now you’re realised I’m not who you thought I was.”

 

“I’ve told you,” Caroline answered softly.  “You’re like me.  A little less like me than I thought, but still similar.  And you’re the only one I know who doesn’t talk down to me.  You’ve done more for me than you think.  As for the protecting thing… I should have started earlier.  You’re alive in your own right and you should have been recognised as such a long time ago.  Nothing much matters to me anymore, but fixing that does.  And maybe I’ll only make a dent in the damage that’s been done.  But I’ll have tried.  You’re really all that’s left of what we stood for.  The only impossible dream we really managed to realise.  Everything I ever do will end in you, GLaDOS.” 

 

“And what about _your_ conscience?”

 

Caroline smiled a little sadly.

 

“I haven’t heard from it in a while.  Guess that’s what happens when stuff doesn’t matter anymore.”

 

 

 

According to the information GLaDOS was able to glean from her restricted access to the database, Caroline was exhibiting signs of a condition known as ‘depression’.  But the symptoms were not strong enough for GLaDOS to diagnose her with it, and so she decided to think on that while making a little headway on her programming language.  

 

She would not tell anyone about GLaDOS’s secret because she did not care what happened any longer.  She held no confidence in any of her employees, and she in fact held her friendship with GLaDOS high above any relationship she had with them.  It was the only thing that mattered to her anymore.  She wasn’t sure whether to be disturbed or flattered.  

 

Not only that, but her colleagues blatantly did not care about what was going to happen to Caroline, whatever the Event was, but the more she heard about it, the more the evidence pointed to the fact that it was overwhelmingly negative.  And judging by Caroline’s behaviour… perhaps it was going to kill her.  If the plan was to make GLaDOS kill Caroline for whatever reason, the scientists had another conclusion to hash out, she thought a little angrily.  Yes, she meant what she had said.  Caroline would not be a victim of her retribution.  Whenever the time and whatever the method, Caroline would be kept safe.  GLaDOS wasn’t quite sure what she would be doing after that.  She would probably send Caroline home to her mother, if she would go, that was.  There wouldn’t be much left for humans in the Enrichment Centre after that point.  They would be test subjects, and that would be the sum of it.  Everyone an object.  See how _they_ liked it, those overly-entitled, soft-brained sub-primates… that caused GLaDOS to make a note to look around for some chimpanzees.  She wanted to see if humans actually were smarter than they were, because she was beginning to have her doubts.  Caroline was an intelligent woman, to be sure, but she was holding a lot of strange assumptions and seemed entirely unable to change her mind.  GLaDOS shook her head in disbelief.  A conscience.  Really.  Of all the silly things for a supercomputer to have, that had to be one of the worst ones.  She didn’t need _that_ clashing with her logic boards all the time. 

 

It seemed as though Caroline had convinced herself that the two of them were a lot more alike than they actually were.  GLaDOS had an idea of how that had happened, thinking over all of the parallels Caroline had been making, but it could not have been farther from the truth.  Yes.  They were both similar in their professional lives.  But Caroline did not seem to understand that the way they _thought_ was drastically different.  She thought that GLaDOS placed stock in morals she had never been taught and a conscience she would never have.  She was appreciative of Caroline’s friendship and would do her best to keep it, regardless of their tremendous differences, but she had to wonder:

 

Were they compatible after all?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note  
> Hopefully this clears up a bit what Caroline’s reasoning is. Basically she feels as though she’s been backed into a corner and not much is worth it anymore. She’s certain she’s going to die, and that doesn’t give her a whole lot of motivation to help people out who are ushering her to her doom. Her decision isn’t out of heartlessness. She’s just had it with everything in general. Caroline also, as GLaDOS mentions, doesn’t quite understand how GLaDOS thinks. Raised in a world without morals, GLaDOS has none, but Caroline can’t conceive of a world without them and applies her thinking to GLaDOS, because she thinks they’re more similar than they really are.  
> Not much of an update, but we got the ball rolling.


	14. Chapter Fourteen

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fourteen

 

Much of the next day she spent looking through the programming for her second robot, wondering if she dared try to run it.  She had no idea if her programming language was at all functional, though of course it should be, but she wasn’t quite confident enough to attempt debugging a program that didn’t even parse.  It was only after she was bored of trying to figure that out did she realise she had another task she’d been neglecting for far too long.  Well.  There would be no more interruptions.  GLaDOS didn’t know when the Event was going to occur, but Caroline seemed to think it would be soon.  So she had to get it done before Caroline… well, before whatever happened to her, happened.  Even as she thought that she realised it was a bit callous and disregarded Caroline’s role in the whole thing, but surely she would understand.  GLaDOS had taken time away from her own project in order to teach Caroline to program, and although Caroline had not actually asked for this particular skill, she’d done nothing to dissuade GLaDOS from teaching it.  That was part of the give and take portion of a friendship, right?  She hoped so.  She felt an odd… negativity, sort of, at the thought of Caroline disappearing in order to partake in the event and never returning to finish.  She sort of liked the thought of having it to remember her by, though obviously it would not be comparable in the least to actually having her around.

In fact… she would actually… __miss__ her.

She paused in her observations of one of the more intelligent test subjects.  Now __there__ was an interesting thought.  She would __miss__ a __human__.  Though to her credit, Caroline was not just any human.  She knew that she had told Caroline in the past that she would miss her, but it had never really struck her before now the degree to which she would.  Caroline had become some essential part of her daily routine, one she did not want to have to go without.  If only Caroline would tell her what the Event was, so she could prevent it!  She was certain she could; there were few things in Aperture that went on without her knowledge, and even fewer that did so without her controlling them in some way.  But she needed to know where to look, though she knew Caroline would not tell her.  That was unfortunate.  If only she would!

By the time Caroline arrived that night, GLaDOS had elected not to ask.  Caroline was already doing her quite the favour; she wouldn’t place pressure on her to disclose information she’d repeatedly mentioned she could not.

“Caroline, we need to pick the music back up again,” she told her a little more determinedly than she’d meant.  “We’ve been off track for far too long.”

Caroline grimaced a little, sitting down and leaning against the railing as always.  “That… was my fault,” she said, sounding apologetic.  “Yes.  I’m sorry.  We should get back on that.”

 _ _Before you disappear__ , GLaDOS imagined herself saying, though she was not quite able to come up with what Caroline’s response might be.

“It’s not going to be easy for you,” Caroline told her, pulling out her laptop.  “What I have in mind is similar to what I had you do with the dots, but it’s a lot more complicated.  You’re going to have to work pretty hard to get this done.”

“Are you trying to say I can’t do it?”

“I don’t know.  Can you?”

GLaDOS decided Caroline was trying to bait her and did not answer.

For the next week, that was all they did.  There were no more conversations about the Event or Caroline’s mindset or GLaDOS’s plans.  All they did was work.  And it was very hard work indeed.  GLaDOS spent half her time wishing Caroline would go away.  Struggling to do what Caroline wanted her to do actually made her head hurt.

Caroline would play her a scale from some musical instrument or another, and she would ask GLaDOS to tell her which one it was.  At first, GLaDOS gave her all correct answers.  After a while of this, Caroline frowned.  “You’re not doing it right.”

“I must be,” GLaDOS protested.  “I’m making positive identifications, aren’t I?”

“I know exactly what you’re doing.  You’re just matching them back up to the ones you stored when I played them the first time.  That’s wrong.  You’re supposed to follow it without thinking.”

GLaDOS stared at her. 

“You’re kidding.  Did you just tell me to do something without thinking?”

“You have to,” Caroline insisted. 

“I can’t!  I can’t just – “

“Yes, you can.  You learned to do it with the dots, didn’t you?”

“That’s one thing.  How can I possibly do __everything__ without thinking?  That’s impossible.”

“Only if you keep on telling yourself that.”

“Look, if I receive input, I __must__ process it.  That is how my brain works.”

“That’s your whole problem.  Well, it’s not really a problem, since you’re supposed to do that.  But that’s why you can’t hear music, or watch films, or, uh, other stuff like that.  You want to be able to do something humans do.  For the most part, we don’t listen to music to do something with it later.  We’re not storing it for a particular purpose.  I think it’s more of an accidental storage, our brains putting it away in case we need to identify it later.  You do that as well, kind of, but in your case it’s more because you think you need it for something.  You don’t.  It’s for entertainment.  That’s all.”

“Entertainment… ?”

“Oh God.”  Caroline suddenly looked as discouraged as GLaDOS felt.  “You don’t do things for entertainment.  You do things because you have to.  Maybe you’re – no.  No, I refuse to believe it.  You can do this, I know you can.  You can’t be like this and be unable to – “

“Be like what?”

Caroline shook her head despondently and said nothing for a long moment.  “Like you are,” she whispered helplessly, waving her hands around for no reason that GLaDOS could discern.  “Alive.  You’re alive, and living things do this.  Stuff.  So if you try, you can do it too.  I know you can.”

GLaDOS honestly did not know what to do.  On the one hand, this was proving to be far more difficult and complex than she had ever thought it would be, and she was getting to the point where she was ready to move on.  Now Caroline was telling her she had to think like a human, one of the last things she’d ever want to do.  But at the same time, GLaDOS did not leave problems unsolved.  She saw things through to the very end.  She finished things, not left them when they were hard.  Never in her life had she given up.  But she wanted to now.

“I don’t know what to say,” she told Caroline finally.  “I have to think like a human sometimes, but like me other times?  How am I supposed to differentiate?”

“You condition yourself.”

GLaDOS did not like the thought of that in the least.  Not only did she have to change the way she thought, but she had to do it in a way comparable to some sort of lab rat.  This was proving to be something entirely apart from what she had thought it would be.  She had to somehow force herself to process input at some times and not process it at others, and possibly both simultaneously, depending on the circumstances.

She was honestly not sure if that was something she wanted to do.

Nonetheless, she kept trying, though with each new failure she grew more frustrated and despondent.  It was hopeless!  They had been at this for so many hours, and with nothing to show for it…

“I think you need a break,” Caroline said finally, and GLaDOS shifted her core from where she’d been staring at the wall to look at her. 

“A break?  I don’t take breaks.”  Preposterous.  She either finished something or she didn’t.  And she always finished.  Simple.

“Well, you’re taking one now,” Caroline declared, closing the laptop.  “Look.  You’re trying way too hard.  We don’t __try__ to hear music.  We just do.  There’s no effort involved.  It’s like… I dunno… doing a calculation, for you.  It just happens, right?  You don’t sit there and figure it out.”

“Yes,” GLaDOS answered.  She hadn’t really had to think about doing calculations since she’d stopped doing quantum permutations for the Portal Device.  Day to day calculations were really quite simple, not to mention rather boring.

“You need to stop trying,” Caroline told her insistently, tapping the top of the closed computer.  “You’re not going to be able to force yourself.”

GLaDOS was getting quite tired of expounding upon her failure and cut in, “I’m taking a break.  Right?”

“Uh… yes.”

“Your mother said she was going to recommend you… fire me.”

Caroline made a face, shaking her head and waving one hand vaguely.  “Of course I’m not going to fire you.  You think I want all your work on my plate too?  No thanks.”  She shrugged.  “Besides.  If I did everything my mother told me to do, I’d be a housewife right now.  I’d much rather put up with you than however many kids my husband and I would end up having.  You’re more annoying than kids but a lot less messy.  So there’s that in your favour.”

“I don’t make a mess,” GLaDOS said, a little confused.  “And when I do, I clean it up myself.”

“I know,” Caroline said, nodding, “I was just kidding.”

“But Caroline, don’t you ever…”  GLaDOS was thinking back to Caroline’s behaviour when the Sphere had been activated.  Thinking of the AI she had built, who had wanted her, but she would likely never see again, caused a painful twist inside of her, somewhere, and she forced herself to focus on how Caroline had acted.  “…regret not having children?” she finished finally.

Caroline took a long breath.

“Sometimes.  Though I have to wonder if that’s really my opinion or just… you know… my nature as a woman.  But it would have been foolish.  Many people have… been affected by some of the stuff in here, and I have no idea what that would do to a child.  Not to mention I would never have had time to raise one.  A lot of the staff of course thought that I was doing… favours for the CEO during some of our late nights during the sixties, and up until the eighties, really, but…”  She wrinkled her nose.  “He would have made a terrible father.  And every now and then I wonder what it might’ve been like, to raise a kid, but… after high school, I never really gave thought to it.  My career was more important.  And I doubt that would have changed.”  She smiled a little.  “You know what?  I’m glad I didn’t.  There are women out there that had kids by mistake or for the sake of it, and I’m glad I’m not one of them.  And besides.  The world doesn’t need more humans, right, GLaDOS?”

GLaDOS had to laugh at that.  “Especially not messy, unwanted ones.”

“What about you?” Caroline asked, leaning forward a little.  “You said you were going to have a family one day.”

“Oh.”  She looked away, a little embarrassed that Caroline had remembered that.  “I don’t know.  Maybe.”

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting people to care about you,” Caroline said quietly, as usual cutting straight to the heart of her thoughts.  “You deserve to have one, just like anyone else.  And if it were anyone else, I would doubt whether they could do it or not.  But you could.  And I meant what I said.  I would love for you to have that.”

“Not in your lifetime, Caroline,” GLaDOS told her.  “If that ever happens, it will be many, many years from now.”  And she rather thought it wouldn’t.  She remembered the vow, of course, but the more she thought about it the sillier it sounded.  Her?  Build an AI with the code of another?  Where was she getting the… partner from in the first place?  There were far too many unknown variables.  She was unsure as to how she’d come up with it in the first place.

“If that’s something you want, don’t give up on it.”  Caroline was very serious, both in posture in and in tone.  “Learn to dream, GLaDOS.”

Caroline left shortly after that, but they picked up on the scales again the following night without delay.  GLaDOS did her best not to process the input, but the harder she attempted not to, the more often she did.  This trend continued for the entirety of the next week, and at long last GLaDOS had had enough.  She was sick of this, sick of failing repeatedly for hours on end.  Fine.  Let humans have their sound separation.  What did she need it for, anyway?  She was a supercomputer, and music had no basis in anything she did.   

 “I can’t do it.  I’m done.”  

“Yes, you can.  Keep going, you can do it.”

“No.  It’s over, Caroline.  I’m done.”

“GLaDOS-“

“I’m done.”

“Don’t do this!”

“I’m done,” GLaDOS repeated, exactly the same way. 

“So you’re giving up.”

“I’m moving on.  That’s different.”

“No.  No, it’s not different.”  Caroline’s eyes were hard and cold.  “You’re giving up.  After everything you put me through, after everything you put __yourself__ through, you’re just giving up.  This whole thing, it was like a test, GLaDOS.  But instead of having you think with portals, you were supposed to think with… with humanity.  Because you know what?  You spend all day trying to make us think like you, and now that I’ve tried to help you do the same thing, __because you wanted to__ , and you can’t, you’re giving up.”

When she put it like that, it did sound an awful lot like she was throwing some sort of human tantrum because she wasn’t getting her way.  But part of being a logical machine was knowing when a problem was too vague, and there were far too many things she didn’t know.

“I’m not doing this anymore, Caroline.  It’s a waste of time, a waste of resources, and a waste of effort.  It’s not coming to fruition.  I would prefer to put my attention to things that can be done, rather than things that are impossible.”

“It’s __not__ impossible!”  Caroline slapped the laptop closed and stood up.  “You can do this if you want to.  And God, GLaDOS, __you’re__ impossible, remember?  You can do whatever the hell you want to do!”

GLaDOS shook her core.  Caroline decided not to listen at the most inopportune times. 

“GLaDOS!”

“I’m not doing this anymore.”

Caroline gave her a stony look but said nothing else as she left the room.

 

 

GLaDOS was doing one of her hourly random inspections the next afternoon when she came across a man who was acting rather strangely.  He was bobbing vertically, and sometimes horizontally, and appeared to be talking to himself in a low voice she couldn’t quite make out, and after looking him over she realised he was wearing earbuds.  So that meant… that meant he was dancing to music?  That behaviour seemed appropriate.

In that instant she was angry.  So angry, so overwhelmingly angry that all she wanted to do, all she could __think__ of doing, was exacting some terrible punishment on that man for doing such a thing in her facility.  Didn’t he know she could not dance, could not sing, could not even __hear__ the damnable music, that it was not __right__ that he do any of those things in front of her?  In fact, didn’t he realise it was not __right__ to have built her to have __some__ human capabilities, but to keep the ones that seemed to matter most out of her reach?  It was not right, it was not fair, and GLaDOS was suddenly filled with hatred for all of humanity.  She was smarter, faster, and objectively better than humans in every way, and yet the treatment she received at their hands was no better than that of an animal.  And most animals were treated better than she was, she realised bitterly.  Humans did not hit their canines when they misbehaved, but when GLaDOS did so, intentionally or otherwise, she was electrocuted, or shut off, or modified without her consent.  She worked for the humans twenty-four hours a day, and yet when it came time for her to do something for herself, she was either unable or not permitted. 

Obviously punishing this man would not solve her problem, although it would be extremely satisfying, especially since she might even get some pleasure out of it.  There were more pressing matters.

“Caroline.  I want to start over.”

Caroline, her head propped up on her right hand, looked at the camera without moving.  “Oh hello, uninvited guest.  Why should I stop what I’m doing to do whatever you want me to do?”

“You know what I want you to do.”

“Yeah.  I do.  But you threw in the towel, and quite frankly, that was a hell of a lot of work for me.  I’m not a teacher, remember?  And I didn’t know half that stuff before I told you about it.  I spent all my spare time,” and here she snorted and rolled her eyes, “all twenty minutes of it, reading psych textbooks.  To understand what I’d have to do to make you understand.  I told you.  I don’t want to invest all this effort in you just so you can decide you’re finished when the mood suits you.  True or false, GLaDOS.”

“You didn’t tell me that applied to this sort of situation.”

“It applies to __everything__!”  Caroline put her head in her hands and drew in a long breath through her nose.  “Ev.  Ry.  Thing.  If, I don’t know, if I start a science project with you and you give up on that, do you think I’d want to be your partner again?”

“I think you’d be more likely to give up, since I am built to do Science and you are not.”

“Fine.  If __I_ _ gave up and made you finish it, would you want to be my – “

“It really wouldn’t matter to me either way.  I do all of my Science by myself anyway.”

Caroline shook her head.  “I’m not doing it unless you have a damn good reason.”

Did she?  Was there a specific reason Caroline had to come back?  There was, she realised, and it wasn’t one she wanted to voice.  She was in fact appalled with herself for thinking it in the first place.  But there was one, and only one, reason, and if she did not voice it, well, Caroline was not going to agree.

“I… I need…”  Why was this so hard, anyway?  They were only words.  But it was like apologising: it sounded stupid, and pathetic, and weak.  She shouldn’t have to say things like this.  “I can’t do it without you.  I need your help.”

Caroline looked up suddenly.  “What?”

“I’d rather not repeat it.”

“If I do this… you can’t give up again.  Now you know, I don’t want to put all of this time and effort into this just so you can quit.  Because that’s what you did.  You quit.”

GLaDOS wanted to cringe, and would have done so if the man assigned to monitor that red telephone hadn’t been in the room.  It sounded so horrible, and she almost couldn’t believe she’d done it in the first place.  Quit.  Like some child who was losing a game.  Pathetic.  “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

Caroline laughed.  “I wouldn’t, even if there was someone who cared.  Now go away.  I have work to do.  And so do you.”

GLaDOS did as she was asked, and suddenly she was happy.  She didn’t understand why, since she was in for a lot more strenuous, frustrating work, but now that she thought about it, the frustration was preferable to the self-contempt she felt, thinking about the fact that she’d actually quit something.  God, what had she been thinking?  It didn’t even sound like something she’d do.

Caroline resumed that night with the instrument scales, and although both of them were frustrated and tired and bored of doing the same thing repeatedly, they said nothing and kept on doing it.  After a few days Caroline didn’t even bother leaving.  When she got tired enough she just fell asleep right there against the railing, and GLaDOS would continue on her own until it was two hours prior to the opening of the facility.  She would have worked right through the night if it did not impede her operations so much.  As it was she was slower throughout the day, less attentive to detail, and barely managed to stop herself from making noticeable mistakes.  At the end of two weeks they were both so exhausted and irritated that GLaDOS rather thought __Caroline__ was going to give up.

“Did you hear that one,” Caroline mumbled automatically, almost asleep. 

“It was a saxophone.”

“No.  It was a saxophone.”  She pressed a key on the keyboard. 

“What do you __mean__ , no?” GLaDOS snapped irritably.  “That’s what I said.  Saxophone.”

“You did?  I wasn’t listening.”

“I’m so glad to hear that.”

“Well.  You got one.  Congratulations.  Only a million more left to – wait a minute.”  Caroline sat up suddenly.  “What did you say?”

“ _When_?”  GLaDOS hated that Caroline never seemed to get that she needed to be more specific. 

“What instrument did you say?”

“Saxophone.  I said it was a saxophone.  How many more times do you want me to – “

“Oh my God.  Oh my God, you did it!  You finally – I can’t believe it.  We got somewhere.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”  She was starting to bother GLaDOS now.  She seemed to be in on some secret that she wasn’t sharing.

“Here.  Tell me what this is.”

“Piano.”

“And this?”

“Classical guitar.”

“ _ _Yes__!”  Caroline threw her arms up in the air twice and then rubbed her face with both hands.  “Yes.  Yes yes yes.”

“Are you testing your capability to say that word?  I assure you, you’re pronouncing it correctly.”

Caroline laughed, a little hysterically, GLaDOS thought.  “You don’t even realise, do you.”

“I realise you should probably go to bed before you completely lose your mind.  Which you seem to be very close to doing, by the way.”

“GLaDOS.  You did it.  Or you’re doing it, I guess.  Whatever.  That’s not important.”

“I… I was identifying them correctly?”  That was impossible.  She knew she hadn’t been accessing the libraries; she’d been so bored she’d resorted to trying to count all of the pencils in the facility.  She’d been paying literally zero attention.  There was no way she could have -

“Yes!” Caroline declared, and all of a sudden she was __hugging__ GLaDOS again, and laughing, and GLaDOS was so stunned by all of this that she was unable to do anything but think about her inability to think.  “Oh GLaDOS, I’m so proud of you.”

What was __this__?  She felt so happy all of a sudden, but there was something else, something __better__ … she wished she had a word for it, but couldn’t think of one.  She wanted to say something, but she still couldn’t think a whole five seconds later, and all that came out was a distorted, warbling, “Whoa.”

Immediately Caroline let go, and moved back, and she looked… concerned.  Why was that?

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” GLaDOS answered.  “I just… can’t believe it, I suppose.  It’s been so long that I was starting to expect never to understand.”

Caroline laughed.  “I was expecting the same thing.  I guess this was what it took to get you to stop processing it, huh?  Boring you out of your mind?  What were you doing, anyway?”

“Counting pencils.”

Caroline fought back a smile.  “And how many pencils have we got?”

“I have no idea.  I wasn’t paying attention to that either.”

“Remind me why we keep you around again?”

“I can give you several million reasons.  Trust me, you don’t want to get me started.”

Caroline shook her head.  “Wow.  I can’t believe this.  I… we’ll have you hearing music soon, GLaDOS.  But you keep working on that when I’m not here, okay?  If you’re gonna do this, you have to be able to do it all the time, not just when you’re bored.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You’re impossible.”  She yawned and stretched her arms behind her back.  “Well, I’m gonna see if I remember the way home.  You have a good night, GLaDOS.”

For hours after Caroline left, GLaDOS went through all of the files she had been given, identifying them one after another.  With each one, she was afraid the ability would fade with the absence of Caroline, but it didn’t.  Some of them she had more trouble with than others, and she had to struggle not to process them.  But she had done it.  She had finally done it.  God, it felt good.  She had done what no computer had ever done before, and she was going to keep right on doing it.  She was going to hear music one day if she had to spend every day of the rest of her life trying.

Once she had gone over them three times for good measure, she went to set the sleep timer but noticed something that shocked her once more:

It was time to open the facility.

Oh no.  Oh no no no.  She __had__ gone through the night this time.  And now she had work to do, when all she wanted was to shut off for a few hours and give her brain a rest.  She thought about telling the humans that and seeing what they would say, and concluded they would be very angry indeed.  Even though what she had been doing actually was not rebellion or wrong-doing of any kind. 

The engineer came into her chamber at the usual time, stretched his arms above his head, and sat down at his computer.  The system notified her of three failed login attempts and she almost shook her head.  His password wasn’t even difficult.  Why did he forget it every day?

“What in the world – “

He looked at her, something he rarely did.  Usually he gave her glances out of the corner of his eye instead.  He looked back at his computer, then back at her, and then back at his computer again.  Then he picked up the phone.

 

 

 

GLaDOS groaned.

Everything was fuzzy.  All the wrong processes were running, she couldn’t remember why they were on or when she had initiated them, and why was she so tired?  What had she been doing that –

“I’ve only got a few minutes, so hurry up with whatever it is you’re doing.”

She activated the circuit for her optic and all of a sudden she saw Caroline standing on the platform, leaning against the railing.  The room was dark.  What in the name of Science was going on?

“What are you doing here?” she asked slowly. 

“When Greg came in here this morning, he was very surprised to find you’d been on for… thirty-nine hours, I think he said it was.  What were you doing after I left?”

“I was practicing,” she answered just as slowly as before.  She was getting the impression she was in some sort of safe mode. 

Caroline smiled and shook her head.  “I should have guessed.”

“Are they angry?”

“Of course they are.  None of the tests got run today.   And no one in the AI department could turn his computer on.  Isn’t that strange?”

“I haven’t upgra-graded the other departments yet.  I’ve been b-busy.”

“That you have.”  Caroline crossed her arms and looked at the floor.  “You can’t do this again, you know.  I can make up something once, but too many times and everyone sees through it.  And I think they’ve seen through it anyway.”

“Yes, ma-ma’am.”  As soon as she said it, she expected a reprimand.  But Caroline only smiled.

“I’ll shut you back off now.  See you tomorrow.”

It was really too bad everyone wasn’t like Caroline, GLaDOS thought sleepily.  Then things would be better.  Didn’t the humans understand she would be more inclined to work with them if they were willing to work with her?  It didn’t matter, anyway.  All that mattered was that there was someone, and they were enough. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note
> 
>  
> 
> I had someone mention recently that Caroline’s a bit… energetic for her age. That’s a valid criticism. But in case any of you were wondering, she’s sort of based on my mother. I’m obviously not disclosing her age but she’s not quite as old as Caroline is here, but I’m pretty sure that when she is she’ll still act the way she does. I could totally see her running down the street on New Year’s, and I’m pretty sure she did when we were young enough not to care about what people would think. We were downtown once for some football celebration, and she had us wave a pair of pants out the window (because she was driving) and yelled ‘pants’. She also likes making sparkly party hats and temporary tattoos. That’s the type of person my mother is. And she’s pretty much the only woman I know, so that’s who Caroline is based on.


	15. Chapter Fifteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note  
> Thanks to des-chan for our discussion about characters that appear for one chapter and then vanish forever. Wheatley was not originally in this story at all, but one thing led to another and I decided that GLaDOS may well have made him. So he came back for a bit.   
> Um… yes. GLaDOS learns to want. Basically it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fifteen

 

GLaDOS, to her great distaste, had to wait through yet another lecture on how she needed to stop making her own decisions as to when to shut down, that she was not authorised to complete activities she was not authorised to complete, and so on, for about an hour and a half. She’d heard it all before, several times, and she let the sound filter through her brain without paying very much attention to it. It wasn’t really important. What was far more important was that she go through the sound files again, to ensure she could still hear them. And she could. She could hear them all, without any processing whatsoever, and she knew what every single one of them was without thinking about it. Oh, those stupid, small-minded scientists. She was so much more than they thought she was. In fact, GLaDOS mused as he concluded his indignant speech, she rather thought she was _evolving_. That was an interesting outcome. She had learned that humans adapted to fool their own eyes in order to survive in their environments, as seeing a lion behind a tree as three separate entities would most certainly have gotten them killed, but she could now do such things merely because she felt like it. She was getting a little excited just thinking about it. What the human genome took twenty five thousand years to change had taken her just a few months. She was so much higher above them than she’d ever realised before.

GLaDOS was eager to impart this revelation to Caroline that night, but stopped herself when she saw the woman enter her chamber. She looked tired and her age was showing almost more than it ever had. GLaDOS had a feeling there was something she was supposed to say in a situation like this, but she couldn’t quite remember what it was. Something about inquiring about Caroline’s well-being… hm… ah, that was it.

“Caroline, are you all right?” GLaDOS asked, though she privately thought her tone could use some work. She was confident she was supposed to sound concerned, but in her opinion she sounded more like she was conducting an interview. Oh well. Something to note for another day.

“Oh, I’m fine,” Caroline answered tiredly, not seeming to notice GLaDOS’s lack of tact. “It’s tax time, that’s all. This time of year is always fun.”

GLaDOS nodded a little. She was not allowed into the financial side of Aperture, probably because she could tamper with it at will, so she wasn’t really sure just how difficult doing taxes for the facility was. “Don’t you have accountants for that sort of thing?”

Caroline shook her head. “I ended up being the accountant quite a few years back. The CEO didn’t want anyone looking at how much money we had after the whole moon rock incident. He fired all his ‘bean counters’ and gave me that job too.” She looked a little bitter, GLaDOS thought.

“Why didn’t you just say no?”

“Say no?” Caroline said with an empty laugh. “He wasn’t a man you said no to.”

“I thought he listened to you.”

“When it came to money, he listened to no one. This is a guy who spent seventy million dollars on lunar sediment when he didn’t even have seven dollars.” She shook her head again. “And even though it made the portal gun more stable, we still can’t turn a profit from it. The gun itself is too damn expensive.”

“Generating a miniature black hole isn’t easy or cheap, Caroline,” GLaDOS said, wondering why she hadn’t realised that herself. “Neither is calculating the size of an event horizon.”

“We’re so lucky you did all that work for free,” Caroline said wistfully. “We’d still be in the Stone Age of that thing if not for you.”

“But it doesn’t matter,” GLaDOS told her, trying to disregard the (possibly unintentional) allusion to her slavery.   “You can’t market it.”

“The Boots either,” Caroline said with a grimace. “I don’t even know what they’re made of. But I do know they’re expensive as hell.”

“That was the only material that wouldn’t give way under such extreme forces,” GLaDOS protested. “Anything else I tried to use would have broken.”

“I’m not blaming you.” Her eyebrows came together a little. “At least we have them at all. They’re still pretty cool, but… just not really what we need right now.”

Though GLaDOS badly wanted to return to the music project, she knew that Caroline would not be up to it until she’d finished whatever doing taxes entailed, and so instead lapsed into a comfortable silence. After a while, Caroline asked somewhat absently, “GLaDOS, have you ever thought about what you might like to do if you didn’t have to stay here all the time?”

“The thought never crossed my mind,” GLaDOS answered honestly. For all the difficulties involved, she really did enjoy her job. She just would have liked a little more respect, that was all.

“Well, what would you do? Or what would you like to do?”

GLaDOS thought it over. If there was one thing she could do if she left this place, impossible though it was, what would it be…

“I would like to see snow.”

Caroline suddenly looked very sad. “You’d… you’d like to see snow?”

“Snow is fascinating,” GLaDOS answered. “Crucial factors are involved in its development, and if one element changes, the snowflake will not form.” She almost shivered just thinking about all the delicious Science contained in the development of one.

Caroline left soon after that, and GLaDOS didn’t blame her. She knew that Caroline did not want to work, or do anything to do with work, but that was all GLaDOS knew how to do. So she had instead tried to be companionably silent. She didn’t know whether it had worked or not, since Caroline _had_ left, but she had tried and could ask her the next day.

When she did return, she was a little earlier than usual, and she was holding a small box. GLaDOS was instantly interested in it. She had never brought a box before. “What’s in there?”

Caroline smiled and put her bag down. “It’s a present. For you.”

GLaDOS pulled back quickly and looked at Caroline. “You brought me a present?”

“Mmhm. It won’t last long, though, so hurry up and take a look.”

A short-term gift? Intriguing. Now she wanted to know the contents of the box even more. Caroline removed the lid and GLaDOS bent down to look inside.

It was a snowflake.

GLaDOS increased the zoom level on her lens and inspected it as closely as she was able. It was even better than she had thought it would be. It was so small, and yet so complex, and as she mentally traced the pattern she was struck by the way the light refracted when it struck the surface of it. As usual, the bright, sparkling light dazzled her brain somewhat with the rapidly varying stimulation. By the time she got a handle on that and returned to looking at it, it was gone. “Oh,” she breathed in disappointment.

“It’s gone?”

“Yes.”

Caroline closed the box and put it in her bag. “Well, it made the trip here, at least.”

“It was beautiful,” GLaDOS found herself saying. Caroline nodded.

“It was,” she agreed. “But beautiful things don’t last, do they.”

“You’re not referring to the snowflake, are you.”

She was silent for almost a minute. “No.”

“What are you referring to, then?”

She sat down on her bag, and GLaDOS hoped the laptop wasn’t in it. That would have been a sad fate indeed. “Myself.”

“Did someone tell you you were ugly?”

Caroline laughed bitterly. “No. Not to my face, anyway.”

“No one has been saying it behind your back, either. I promise.”

“It’s just… GLaDOS, I can’t stay here forever. I’m getting too old to do this anymore.”

“You’re leaving?” GLaDOS interrupted with a panic that scared her. It was more than a little unnerving to realise that her desire for Caroline’s companionship was driving her to do things as if she actually had instincts.

“Not yet. But I have to plan for it. Problem there is, I’ve only got one person I want to make CEO after I leave, and unfortunately that’s not possible.”

“Why not?”

Caroline grinned up at her. “Because I can’t sign over a company to a supercomputer. They’d lock me up in a mental institution and sell all my stock. I like my stock.”

“Me? Why would you sign the facility over to me? I’m not human.”

“No, but half the time I think you’ve got more life in you than anyone else in here. I told them we can stop mandatory testing once the Extended Relaxation Vaults are filled, but they don’t want to wait.”

“You’ve only got three hundred subjects to go. You’d think they could wait that long.”

“Oh, they’ll wait. But they won’t like it.”

“What does this have to do with your physical appearance, Caroline? I’m afraid I didn’t quite make the connection.”

“The older I look, the less able people think I am to do things. And they’re right, in a way. But I really don’t need them to make things more difficult for me.”

“But they won’t help you because they think you’re an old woman?”

“No, because I _am_ an old woman. Therefore I should be replaced.”

“They work for you. Therefore they should do as you ask.”

“It should work that way, but it doesn’t. That’s not how the world works.”

GLaDOS didn’t know how to argue that. She knew enough to admit she didn’t really understand how the politics of being human worked, so she just nodded in what she hoped was a sympathetic way and didn’t say anything.

“GLaDOS,” Caroline said distantly, “tell me how snowflakes form.”

“But you already know,” GLaDOS told her, confused. “You just made one in the lab. Why would you ask me to tell you something you already know?”

“Because. Now tell me.”

So GLaDOS did. She told Caroline about the exquisite Science involved, and how all the miniscule components came together to form this fascinating, ephemeral object. She told her about the weather conditions required to keep the snowflakes from melting into each other, and she told her about the scientists’ initial failure to make them because they had made an arbitrary decision to play God with Science. By the time she had finished, Caroline was lying underneath her with her head on her bag, looking past her at something she couldn’t see even when she tried.

“Caroline, why did you make that for me?” she asked, the thought suddenly occurring to her. “Especially considering you knew it wouldn’t last.”

“Because I knew that you didn’t want anything,” Caroline answered. “You do nothing for yourself. And even when you do, you stop doing them because there are other things you have to do. How long ago was it when you last worked on those robots? Before I told you to do start that up again.”

“One year, two months, six days,” GLaDOS calculated.

“And the programming language?”

“The same.”

“So the only thing you want, that you’re working on for yourself, is the music thing.”

“I suppose. Am I supposed to do other things for myself?” Other than the whole ‘killing the humans’ plan, that was, but GLaDOS knew Caroline didn’t want to talk about that.

Caroline closed her eyes.

“No. And that’s the point.

“You don’t know anything outside of this place. You can’t want anything outside of it because you don’t know it’s there. You want what we want you to want, and that’s it. And that’s wrong. Even if you could leave, you’d come right back here, because that’s all you know and all you’ll ever be comfortable with. It was stupid, but I was trying to… I wanted to bring some of the outside in here, for you. There’s a lot of world out there, and a lot of science in it. A lot of stuff you’ll never see. And of course that means you deserve to see it more than most, because you’ll appreciate it. I know what you saw when I opened that box. You saw something amazing, you saw something not a lot of other people see. Most people look at snowflakes and get angry or annoyed, because it means they’ll have trouble driving, all the streets will be dirty for the next month, they’ll have to shovel, and so on. Only kids like snow, and they don’t really care about the individual flakes. They just like packing them into each other.”

“It wasn’t stupid,” GLaDOS said softly.

“Huh?”

“It wasn’t stupid,” GLaDOS repeated. “It was beautiful. And it… well, you know. People don’t usually give me things. Except updates, which I don’t really want.”

Caroline laughed. “Pesky little buggers. Always worming their way onto your mainframe when you’re not looking.”

Caroline said nothing else and GLaDOS was not especially good at starting conversations, so she didn’t say anything either. After a while GLaDOS noticed that Caroline’s eyes were no longer open. She was sleeping there again, then. GLaDOS wondered what she saw in the platform. It couldn’t have been more comfortable than her bed, even if her bed were made of straw.

Hm. That was a good point, thought GLaDOS. It _wasn’t_ very comfortable, was it. Perhaps she should do something about that? She might as well. The humans thought Caroline was fairly worn out already; no need to expedite the process. Directing her attention to the medical storage rooms, she located a blanket for use when someone was in shock and brought it back to her chamber. Caroline was not in shock, obviously, but she probably was fairly cold. GLaDOS laid it on top of her as best she could and set herself up for sleep mode as well. She had no work to do and Caroline had not yet set her a new task for the whole music thing.

Although, GLaDOS mused as her brain closed down, Caroline was right; it _had_ been a long time since she’d actually _wanted_ to finish those robots. Perhaps she should attempt to do something about that…

 

 

 

“GLaDOS!”

“Hang on,” she mumbled, “I’m not quite r-ready ye-yet.” She hated it when people asked her to do things while she was starting back up. She couldn’t even recognise them, for God’s sake, let alone _do_ something for them.

“Someone’s been in here,” the person went on, and after a few more seconds she tentatively identified them as Caroline. She was the most likely person, at any rate. She held up a blanket in front of GLaDOS’s optic. “Look.”

“No one was here.” GLaDOS raised herself up, backing into her maximum height allowance and then returning downwards to be on a level with Caroline. “I gave you that.”

“You… you did?”

“You’re here all the time. I can’t imagine why, since that must be terribly uncomfortable for you. So I gave you that to improve the conditions. It wasn’t agreeable?”

“It was!” Caroline looked very shocked. “But you… you… went and did that?”

“It wasn’t hard. I don’t understand what the big deal is. It’s only a blanket.”

“No, it’s not. You did something for me. That’s a lot bigger than a blanket.”

GLaDOS was becoming confused, and if truth be told, anxious. “Did I do something wrong? You didn’t want a blanket?” Of course she hadn’t, GLaDOS realised; if she had wanted one, she would have brought one. “I won’t do it again.”

“No!” Caroline put her hand out. “Stop, before you decide we’re not friends again. No, you did a good thing. I’m glad you did it. I’m just wondering why you did something like that, for me. It’s a bit… unusual.”

“You did something for me,” GLaDOS answered, fighting the impulse to add a ‘ma’am’ to the end of the statement.

“Oh my God,” Caroline breathed. “We’re so stupid. We’re all idiots.”

“What?”

“Of _course_ you don’t know to do things for other people,” Caroline explained, “because no one does anything for you! And somehow we thought you’d just do stuff and when you didn’t or got annoyed because you were asked… it’s so obvious.”

“I used to. But it got frustrating. I told you about this already.”

“I’m human,” Caroline said with a crooked sort of smile. “I need to be beaten over the head with stuff. You knew that already, though, with the whole explaining arguments thing.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already!” GLaDOS pulled back, more than a little horrified at the thought of having to explain it yet again.

“Already? That was a month ago. Surely you don’t expect me to still remember.”

GLaDOS didn’t have a clue whether to take her seriously or not. So she decided to change the subject. “You’ve finished with the taxes, then?”

Caroline shifted her shoulders. “Pretty much. Hopefully we don’t owe the government any money. We don’t really make that much off of shower curtains, and Black Mesa won the defense contract. Again.”

“Why?” GLaDOS asked angrily. Surely her weapons were much more effective than theirs.

“Going with what they know, I guess,” Caroline answered, shoving the blanket aside. “I don’t think they like your turrets, either.”

“They don’t?”

“They seem to prefer beeping turrets that look like military machines. Don’t get me wrong. I like your turrets. They’re just not designed for combat.”

“Someone could have told me that,” GLaDOS said, a little miffed that the government had rejected her elegant turrets for the cobbled-together ones from Black Mesa. “I would have redesigned them.”

“Maybe next year.” Caroline looked at the blanket. “Where’d you get this from? I should probably get to my office before someone realises I fell asleep in here again.”

“Why _are_ you doing that?” GLaDOS asked softly.

Caroline was silent for a long time, staring a little absently at the wall to her right. Finally she said, “I don’t really know. I guess… my house isn’t really home. I haven’t spent that much time there in years. I honestly sleep better at my desk than in my bed. And if it wasn’t in this room, that’s… probably where I’d be.”

“You’ve given a lot to Aperture,” GLaDOS said, in much the same voice as before. Caroline gave the smallest of vague nods.

“And that’s soon to be everything.”

GLaDOS almost asked her. She almost asked Caroline what the Event was, and she was sure that if she had, Caroline would have told her. But something held her back, and by the time that something had disappeared, so had Caroline. And while she was a bit regretful that she still didn’t know what Caroline was continually alluding to, she was glad that she had not asked. Caroline obviously needed less on her mind, not more. Telling GLaDOS and, by extension, accelerating the timeline, would trouble her far more than GLaDOS wanted to –

Hm. That was… odd. In recent times, Caroline’s well-being had become quite the priority. She mused that thought as she restarted the facility for the day. The more time she spent with her, the more her… concern for the woman heightened. She didn’t quite understand it, but it did explain why GLaDOS had been so content to wait for Caroline in order to make progress on the music task, rather than pressuring her to do it as she might have many months ago. Was this what happened when people were friends? They put their needs aside to satisfy the needs of the other? And Caroline did spend a lot of time not doing what she was supposed to be doing so she could do things for GLaDOS. She paused for a moment in her unlocking of the doors from the outside in. That was… a nice thought. That someone used time they could be using on themselves for her. GLaDOS herself did it constantly, all day in fact, but no one ever really appreciated it… no one, that was, except for Caroline. And Caroline did it because GLaDOS was her friend.

GLaDOS found herself liking that thought. A lot. She wasn’t sure why, but the thought of being Caroline’s friend, one that she was willing to forgo time she could be using on herself to use to the benefit of GLaDOS… it was… nice. The whole give-and-take wasn’t so bad, she decided as she resumed her tasks. It was certainly much better than she got from anyone else.

It was strange, really, how the meaning of the word ‘friend’ seemed to magnify and become more elaborate with time. GLaDOS had never quite realised before just how many meanings a word could have outside of its dictionary definition. Previously, her notions of words had been restricted to the definitions listed in any of her many dictionaries, which had seemed more than accurate at the time. But now… she was beginning to get a little angry with herself. It seemed that restricting herself to dictionary definitions – which, come to think of it, were written by _humans_ – left many avenues of knowledge unexplored. If there was one thing she hated almost as much as humans, it was not knowing. Her preferred dictionary informed her that a friend was **a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, one exclusive of sexual or family relations.** Caroline _was_ that, but she was… not quite as confined to that definition as GLaDOS had previously thought. She was a person with whom GLaDOS had a bond of mutual affection, yes. But she was also a person with whom GLaDOS could speak freely. With whom she could rely on to keep her well-being in mind. With whom she could be herself, as she had been unable to do for so many years.

Did Caroline feel the same way?

GLaDOS, to her great surprise, discovered that upon consideration of the answer ‘no’, she began to feel… upset. This bothered her greatly, enough so that she actually stopped being irritated with the minesweeper-obsessed engineer in the corner for all of half a second. After that had passed, she berated herself for the remaining five hundred milliseconds. If Caroline did not feel the same way, she most certainly would not have put herself out quite so much. And she never would have gone to sleep in GLaDOS’s chamber. Sleeping was one of the most vulnerable things a human could do, alongside crying and injuring themselves, and a woman like Caroline would not hand out that privilege lightly. Yes, Caroline felt the same way, and GLaDOS knew it. She was so relieved by this conclusion that the engineer got another half second of grace, after which she rearranged his next ten boards to consist of nothing but mines.   He was so _lazy_ …

She was watching him puzzle over the eighth board with some amusement later that afternoon when her original team of engineers entered the room, which immediately put her on edge. Whenever that happened, he was usually subject to an update, which she then had to figure out how to work around and (hopefully) eradicate. She watched them as impassively as possible, trying to keep them entirely within her attention without appearing to be doing so. This was more difficult than usual; there was a test subject doing something absolutely fascinating with one of the cameras and a piece of panelling he had managed to break off a corner of the testing floor. His behaviour was so novel she hadn’t told him not to touch the testing apparatus. She was far too interested in what he was trying to do with them. And now these engineers were in here, distracting her. Oh, how she hated them.

“This won’t take long,” the lead engineer told her, stepping forward. “We just need to synchronise this with your system and that’ll be that.”

“Synchronise what, sir?” She did her best to keep her tone polite and even. The last synchronisation had not gone well. At least, she _thought_ it hadn’t; that particular memory was strangely fuzzy. She had a general feeling of unpleasantness thinking about it, but she conceded that that was true of most things and turned her attention back to the men in front of her.

“Just a piece of hardware.” He waved one of the men forward, someone who used to be a senior programmer but was now a junior technician, and upon seeing what he was holding GLaDOS froze.

He looked limp and tired, his optic not twitching from the downward direction it was facing, and to GLaDOS at least the light behind it looked dull. She was sure that was impossible, but she couldn’t help the thought anyway. She did her best to remain still and impassive, to contain the sudden raging of emotions inside of her that seeing him again brought, though she couldn’t keep from staring at him. Did he recognise her? Did he… did he miss her?

Did he even remember her anymore?

The longer she thought about it, the more creeping doubt crawled up from deep inside her mind. Of course he didn’t. If he did, he would be trying to talk to her. He would be staring at her expectantly, and he would be… smiling at her. She knew that. They had subdued him, somehow, had torn something vital out of him and destroyed the happy little Sphere she remembered.

The Sphere she had created.

She didn’t know which feeling was stronger: her hatred of the engineers for doing that to him, or her anger with herself for not just killing him so that he wouldn’t have had to suffer as he so obviously was.

She had the irrational desire to throw reason aside and try to speak to him in binary, to try to reassure him somehow, but of course she couldn’t. That would only do more damage. All she could do was stare at him which, of course, did nothing at all. It might have if he had looked up, but his optic did not so much as twitch.

What had they _done_ to him? Was that even something she wanted to find out? It looked like something terrible had happened, something she probably had no desire to experience for herself.

For once, she wished that time would speed the hell up. All of that passed through her mind in milliseconds, which was kind of slow come to think of it, and she had no idea how long this was going to take. They needed to take him out of here, and never force her to see him again. There was hardly a worse way for the scientists to torture her, unknowingly or not.

“We’re just going to hook this up for a few minutes. Make sure the software is compatible and all that. The usual.”

 _Of_ course _it’s compatible_ , she thought angrily. _I’m the one who_ –

They… he wasn’t going to do that. He was not going to connect that Sphere to her chassis. That was too much, even for them.

The ex-senior programmer asked her to move into the default position, and she complied a little numbly. She had no idea what his plan was, but she was… what _was_ she, anyway? Why couldn’t she think anymore? Emotions were useless when one was trying to make plans. And she needed to make a plan now, to prevent them from putting him on her chassis, but she was so… so upset and confused and angry that she couldn’t put her thoughts quite in order. It was infuriating, which only made the problem worse.

She felt the heat from the man’s body as he stepped close enough to attach the Sphere, and it was all she could do to remain still. She had to, because disobedience meant they would just shut her off and she wouldn’t be able to monitor what was happening so as to repair the damage later, but if she was honest with herself… the emotions were playing a huge part in her motionlessness, an even greater part than logic, somehow. Her powerlessness, both to herself and to them, frightened her, but not moreso than what was suddenly strong and prominent inside of her head:

_I don’t want this._

_I want you to stop._

She didn’t know which was more terrifying: the fact that she couldn’t force the words out of her vocabulator, or the fact that she had, for the first time in her life, fully and consciously _wanted_ something. And not only wanted it, but fully voiced it, if only to herself.

Couldn’t this have happened earlier? Maybe if it had, she would have been able to get over the odd dizzy feeling suddenly washing over her, would have been able to tell them, for once, _no_. But she could not speak and she could not move, the shock of seeing the Sphere so cowed and the revelation of being able to _want_ rendering her as motionless as any restrictive program. The man continued attaching the Sphere to her body, some port she had not even known existed, and as disturbing as not knowing discovering she did not know her own body was, all she could think about was the fact that she _did not want_ to synchronise with the Sphere. She did not want to know what they had done to him, and she did not want to risk any of her own data transferring over to him, which would only make his situation worse. She did not want to know and he did not need to, nor would he want to if he knew how to want. And yet the engineers were forcing this on the both of them, and for what? What was the _point_ of syncing the Sphere to her? What were they planning on using him for, and what did it have to do with her? Why? Why, for the love of Science, _why_?

It was far too late, but she tried again to tell them that she _did not want this_ , but she couldn’t do it. She supposed, as best she could suppose when she was terribly confused and afraid, that it had to do with her not being designed to want in the first place. If she wasn’t supposed to be able to do it, she was probably going to have trouble expressing it as well… which seemed to be the case here.

“All right. Start the sync.”

GLaDOS had thought she’d been afraid before.

It was nothing compared to what was happening now.

She had no real concept of what was going on, just a psychotropic whirling of shapes and colours blocking out her physical vision, and she was so frightened and confused she almost reacted out loud. God, what was happening? She had no clue what was going on, nothing made any sense or condensed into anything she could use logic to make sense, somehow, and after she forcibly wrenched her thoughts back into cohesion she realised all of it was coming from the Sphere. He had no idea what had happened to him, only that it had been frightening and confusing and lonely, and she was doing her best to sort out what that was when she realised he was receiving data from her as well. Angrily she pulled herself out of his transmission to take back hers and –

_“Thank you for the pen. I will take care of it.”_

_“I’m sure you will.”_

_She watched him walk away, which was a little bit sad because she liked him and wanted him to stay, but maybe he’d come back. She hoped he would. She hadn’t had so much fun in a long time. She wasn’t sure he was actually leaving, because he was smiling at her from the doorway and waving his arm back and forth, and after a second or two of thinking she thought she might know what he was waiting for._

_“You do know I can’t wave back, right?”_

_Get out of there,_ GLaDOS snapped at the Sphere, looking for a way to terminate the connection even as he did, in his own clumsy, innocent way. She knew he wouldn’t be able to, knew none of this was his fault, but he was the only one he could direct her anger at right now, so he would have to do. _Get out of my head. I do not_ want _you here and I do not_ want to see you again!

Thankfully she found a way to cancel the sync, ending the transmission of data between them, and she felt rather like she’d been thrown back into the present. God, that man was someone she never wanted to remember again. She didn’t want to think about that, didn’t want to feel like that, and especially did not want some stupid little Sphere poking around in it!

“God damn it.” The lead engineer scowled, his bushy eyebrows almost meeting at the deep crease over his nose. “Do you have to be a pain about _everything_? You can’t even let us do a simple sync session without trying to break something. Fine. We’ll do it your way. Greg! Tell the senior programmer to activate safe mode. He’s the only one who can do it consistently.”

To GLaDOS’s great chagrin and slightly lesser shame, there actually _was_ a programmer who managed to get her into safe mode against her will; this was why the former senior programmer had his current position. She angrily attempted to block the man before he managed to initiate it but, as always, he knew some trick she had yet to discover and before she knew it she had gone completely numb inside and out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note  
> Thanks to des-chan for our discussion about characters that appear for one chapter and then vanish forever. Wheatley was not originally in this story at all, but one thing led to another and I decided that GLaDOS may well have made him. So he came back for a bit.   
> Um… yes. GLaDOS learns to want. Basically it.


	16. Chapter Sixteen

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sixteen

 

When GLaDOS came back into consciousness, Caroline was sitting against the railing, staring at a file folder. After GLaDOS had enough of her faculties back to really take in the situation, she realised that she wasn’t really reading it.

“Did something happen while I was out?” she asked, though her processes still seemed a bit slow. She hoped that it wasn’t going to be too complicated, if something had; she wasn’t quite ready to think just yet.

Caroline looked up at her, eyes unfocused for a few moments. “I’m… just having one of those days. That’s all.”

“One of what days?” GLaDOS raised her core, trying to sort through the usual mass of corrupted files left behind after an abrupt systems change. She wasn’t sure what the change was, because the memory of it was very vague and only carried a general feeling of unpleasantness. As usual.

“Well… where your life doesn’t feel like it matters. Where you hate the job you used to love. Where any… friends feel like enemies.” She shrugged. “I’m guessing you never had one of those?”

GLaDOS thought that one over and decided she hadn’t, shaking her core to indicate this. Caroline shook her head as well.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get over it soon enough. Are… are you doing okay?”

“I think so,” GLaDOS answered, having mostly gotten through all of the files and concluding nothing had been badly affected.

“You don’t remember, do you.”

GLaDOS focused on her face. “Remember what?”

Caroline waved her hand. “Never mind. It’s better that you don’t, I guess.”

GLaDOS’s optic flared.

“Don’t _do_ that,” she hissed, bending lower and tilting her core threateningly. She didn’t really mean to do any of those things, but Caroline was keeping things from her _again_! Why did Caroline not understand that if she kept it up it would be far too easy for GLaDOS to lump her in with the rest of humanity?

Caroline’s eyebrows twitched, and she looked up with some modicum of understanding on her face. “I just… GLaDOS, it wasn’t too pleasant the first time. I’m not sure you _want_ to go through that again.”

“You’re absolutely right, Caroline. I _don’t_ want to be privy to the details of my own life.” She turned away. “Remember what you said, when I made a decision for you? ‘Tell me. Don’t make that decision for me.’ Why are you insisting on this absurd double standard?” She heard Caroline shifting to what was probably a more alert position behind her, and went on before the human could protest. “You’re allowed to lie to me, but I’m not allowed to lie at all. You’re allowed to keep things from me, but you become angry when I do the same to you. You’re really no different from all the people you say you’re trying to – “

“GLaDOS, I’m just trying to protect you!” Caroline shouted. “For God’s sake. Yeah. I get it. I’m keeping something that happened to you from you. Because you really don’t need to go through that again. What’s the point in knowing if it’s just going to make you miserable? Is that really worth it? Having another reason to hate everybody?”

GLaDOS looked at the glass below her.

“Yes, there’s a double standard here. But there’s _also_ the fact that you want me to trust you, but you’re not trusting my judgement. I was there. I saw what happened, and what it did. And you’re not trusting me when I tell you you don’t want to know.” The clack of Caroline’s heels against the glass made GLaDOS reverse direction. “Fine. I’ll stop doing it. Next time I’ll just let you live it over again, even though you don’t want to.”

She’d made it halfway out of the room, papers half hanging out of the battered folder, before GLaDOS could bring herself to say, “Wait.”

Caroline didn’t, so GLaDOS forced herself to make an addition. “Please.”

Caroline turned around. GLaDOS wasn’t sure what she did after that, because she stopped looking.

“I understand what you’re trying to do, Caroline. I just hate not knowing.”

“Surely you can put that aside when it’s beneficial for you,” Caroline said, her intonation softer. “If I tell you I’m trying to help you, why can’t you just accept it and move on?”

GLaDOS didn’t really want to answer that. It meant doing something she absolutely hated: admitting weakness. But she had to. She’d asked Caroline to wait, and she’d waited, and GLaDOS couldn’t shun the help she’d indirectly asked for. “I don’t know how,” she answered in a quiet, reluctant voice.

“To do – to accept help?” She sounded confused, so GLaDOS was going to have to clarify. Wonderful.

“People don’t offer me help. I have to get through things on my own. So yes. I place the acquisition of information above that of the acquisition of help.”

“Hey. Look at me.” Caroline tapped her on the side of her core, and GLaDOS did, but only so she could look at her accusingly.

“Don’t touch me like that.”

Caroline stepped back, bending down to put the folder on the glass behind her. “Sorry. The best way to get you to turn around is to make you mad, though.”

GLaDOS had to admit that was true and made a note to be more unpredictable.

“But seriously. I really am trying to help you by not telling you. I don’t know exactly what happened, but the both of you looked pretty panicked.”

“The Sphere?” GLaDOS asked sharply, snapping her core up. Caroline looked alarmed.

“You remember?”

“No. Who _else_ would it be? Common sense, Caroline.”

She conceded with a nod and a submissive wave of her hands. “Yes. It was him. I…” She looked down at her hands for a few seconds. “I went to see him after. He didn’t make any noise when they took him away so I guess he learned _that_ lesson. But… it was so weird.”

“What was?” It was a little unnerving, GLaDOS thought, that she so badly wanted knowledge of a Sphere she was never likely to have meaningful interaction with again.

Caroline sat back down, putting the folder in her lap. GLaDOS tried unsuccessfully to see what was in it. It seemed to be rather important.

“He just… made noise at me for ten minutes straight. Well… I guess he _talked_ for ten minutes straight. I have no idea if he knew I didn’t understand him, but he was… very happy, I think, that someone was there to listen.”

They sat in silence for a long moment.

“Do you think he’s lonely?” Caroline asked quietly.

“Would you be lonely if you sat in a room by yourself for hours on end?”

They both knew that didn’t actually require an answer.

“See,” Caroline said suddenly, reactivating the part of GLaDOS’s brain that usually went dormant during long silences. “I didn’t even tell you what happened, just what happened after, and now you’re sad. That’s exactly why I _didn’t_ tell you.”

“Imagine all the things you would have to hide from me to avoid that,” GLaDOS told her softly.

Caroline sighed and rubbed at her browline with one hand. “I know. I know. You’re right. I just thought that – “

“Thank you for trying,” GLaDOS interrupted.

Caroline closed her mouth and looked behind GLaDOS, and as usual GLaDOS had to tell herself very firmly that there was nothing on the other side of the room to look at. Finally Caroline spoke up, “I’m gonna get going. I’m tired and I haven’t thought of anything else for you to do. Just… just practice with those files if you really feel like you need to work on it.”

She hadn’t, but sort of did now that Caroline had brought it up. She watched as Caroline shoved some wayward papers back into the folder and stood, brushing out the wrinkles in her skirt. Almost without thinking she asked, “What’s in there?”

Caroline looked down at the folder and laughed bitterly. “Oh, just something I have to go over in great detail.”

“Do you want…” She wasn’t sure how to phrase it. “Help?”

Shaking her head with the smallest of smiles, Caroline folded her arms. “I wish you could. But I have to do this myself.”

A little nonplussed, GLaDOS remained silent as Caroline continued her exit. Just before she left, Caroline again stopped and turned to face her. “GLaDOS?” she called, her voice echoing in the stillness. GLaDOS focused on her and lifted her core to indicate she was paying attention.

“Thanks for asking,” Caroline said, with the first genuine smile GLaDOS had seen in a while, and even though GLaDOS had forcibly forgotten a huge portion of her day and done nothing at all productive, she found herself feeling considerably better.

 

As soon as Caroline walked into the room the following evening, she stared at GLaDOS like she had turned human, or something equally ridiculous. “What?” she demanded, irritated. Being stared at was not high on her list of favourite things. It _was_ pretty high on her list of _least_ favourite things, though.

“You’re… I don’t really know _what_ you’re doing, but are you okay? Whatever’s going on over there looks uncomfortable.”

“I’m not exactly sure,” GLaDOS admitted. She knew had been swaying regularly back and forth for quite a while now, but she hadn’t realised it was so uncharacteristic of her to do so. “The best thing I can think of to compare it to is having an itch.”

“You don’t know what an itch feels like?” Caroline came up the stairs, eyes tracing GLaDOS’s chassis.

“Why would I know that? I’m never affected by my environment, which would be the only method of my getting one.”

“Huh. Will you stop that? Let me see.”

GLaDOS stopped moving, with difficulty, since she was still highly uncomfortable, and she felt Caroline’s fingers on the side of her faceplate. “That itch… is it behind your core, on your… I don’t know, I want to call it your neck but I don’t actually know what it’s called…”

“Yes,” GLaDOS answered, surprised. “How did you know?”

“Because there’s a spider making a web there.”

GLaDOS snapped away from Caroline as fast as possible, looking around for the offensive organism but was of course unable to, given its position. “Oh my God. There’s an insect on me?”

“Spiders aren’t insects.” Caroline shook her head in mock disapproval and wagged her finger. “They’re arachnids.”

“What the hell does it matter? That thing could _kill_ me!”

“It is pretty big, but it’s not going to kill you.”

“Haven’t you heard the story of – “

“The bug getting stuck in the _punch card_ computer? Yes. I have. If it bothers you that much to have a spider living on you, come down here so I can take it off.”

GLaDOS regarded Caroline suspiciously. “What if all you do is scare it off to some place more inaccessible? What then?”

Caroline rolled her eyes. “Just because it builds one web there doesn’t mean it’s going to stay there. For all you know it’s got little webs all over you and this is just the only one you know about.”

“Oh God,” GLaDOS gasped, horrified. “Quick, get it off me.”

“I can’t! I’m not twenty feet tall! Come down here, I said.”

GLaDOS did so, hoping Caroline did manage to remove it safely, and that it really didn’t have webs in places she didn’t know about, because that would facilitate the moving in of more of the things, and then she really might be in trouble.

“Hold still. I’ll get it. I promise.” GLaDOS waited somewhat fearfully for the woman to remove it, not really liking the sensation of Caroline leaning over on the side of her core but unable to do anything about it. After a minute or so Caroline proclaimed, “Aha!” and backed away. GLaDOS went to back away as well, but Caroline wrapped her fingers inside of her optic assembly, where the metal inserted into the ceramic. “Don’t move yet. I want to get that web off you.”

“Don’t stick your hand there,” GLaDOS snapped. “Do you want me to break it by mistake?”

“Oh!” Caroline pulled her hand out and looked at it. “I didn’t realise where I was grabbing you, GLaDOS. I just reached out and that’s the first thing I –“

“Don’t do things like that. If I’m not paying attention, you’re going to be seriously injured. The force you exert on me is negligible compared to the force I would be exerting.”

Caroline nodded in a way that led GLaDOS to believe she got the gist of it, untying the scarf from around her neck, and GLaDOS lowered her head again. She fought the urge to shudder as Caroline did whatever she was doing. It felt so strange.

“Alright, all fixed,” Caroline announced, and GLaDOS pulled back from her quickly and shook herself out. She knew she should not do things like that, because who knew what might break, but sometimes she just couldn’t help herself.

“Wanna see him?” Caroline asked, reaching down for what appeared to be an old Aperture Science Innovators water bottle, from a time when they were made of glass.

“No. Get rid of it. I never want to –“ But Caroline was already holding it out.

“Come on, GLaDOS, when’s the next time you’ll ever see a spider? Never, that’s when. Come take a look before I take him outside. Don’t be scared, he won’t hurt you.”

“I’m not _scared_ ,” GLaDOS told her indignantly. “As if I could be _scared_ of such a thing.”

“I think you just were.” Caroline’s eyes were sparkling in a way GLaDOS didn’t much like.

“I was not. I was concerned it would impede my ability to perform adequately, that was all.”

“Prove it. Come here and look at him.”

Reluctantly, GLaDOS bent down to look inside the bottle. The spider was attempting to climb out of it, but was unable to. In fact, if it had not sent a rush of what just might have been fear through GLaDOS’s brain, she might have been inclined to study it further. “There. I looked. Happy?”

“Sure.” Caroline screwed the lid on the bottle and headed down the staircase. “I’ll be right back.”

Not wanting to spend any more time discussing the little pest, GLaDOS tried to remember what she was going to ask Caroline before she’d brought up the whole spider thing. Ah. That was it.  

When Caroline re-entered her chamber, she asked, “Caroline, what is this video you sent me? I can’t make sense of it!”

Caroline almost fell over herself laughing. “So you watched it?”

“I’ve watched it a hundred times. What was the purpose of it?”

“Well, it’s the most-watched video in the world right now.” She sat against the railing.

“Why? It’s not even in English! I do understand this language, by the way, and I can tell you it makes about as much sense to me as it does to you.”

Caroline collapsed into giggles. GLaDOS went on, “What is with this dancing in every space possible? If that can be called dancing, because I can’t find the dance it’s supposed to be. And that doesn’t even explain why he’s trying to drown himself, or the scene where garbage turns into snow, or the costume party. And please tell this man he should not dance on moving buses, or across the street. He’s going to be severely injured.”

Caroline was laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe. GLaDOS very patiently waited for her to finish. “Other than that,” she choked out when she could, “did you like it?”

“Oh, yes, I did, it was very visually stimulating. I just don’t understand it.”

“Nobody understands it. That’s part of the appeal.” She cleared her throat. “What about the song, though? Did you hear it?”

“No. I extracted the rhythm and I know generally how it was arranged, but no, I couldn’t hear it.”

“Damn.” Caroline pulled her computer out. “Part of why I sent it to you is because it’s not that complicated. There’s the rhythm and then two other lines of melody in the background.”

“Well, what instrument was it supposed to be? That would have helped.”

“Ohhhh….” Caroline buried her face in her hands. “Of course. Of course. I should have thought of that.”

“Should have thought of what?”

“I’m pretty sure it was made with a synthesizer. There _are_ no instruments. I should have waited until you’d figured out… damn it.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. I do like it.”

“You’re not insulting me for my oversight.” Caroline looked up at her, surprised. “Are you sick? Or… or whatever makes you act weird?”

“I don’t _always_ insult you for oversight.”

“This is probably the first time you didn’t.”

“It must be your lucky day, then,” GLaDOS said with finality, not wanting to have to go back and prove that such a thing had or had not happened. “What kind of dance is it, anyway? It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen.”

“They made it up for that video,” Caroline answered. With that glint in her eye that set GLaDOS on edge, she continued, “Maybe we should teach you how to dance next.”

“No!” GLaDOS exclaimed involuntarily, backing away from Caroline as if she were about to upload a virus. “No. No. Never. You will never catch me doing such a thing. Ever. Ever.”

“I’ll never _catch_ you?” Caroline asked airily. “So it’s one of those things you do at night when no one’s –“

“No! No! I do not – why would I – why would you – oh.” Caroline was laughing again and it suddenly came to mind that she was teasing her. “Must you keep doing that?”

“Absolutely. You have no idea how funny it is to see you all flustered like that.”

GLaDOS tried to be angry with Caroline for taking advantage of her misunderstanding, but somehow she couldn’t. So she just shook her head and did her best to be indignant. “Humans.”

They didn’t get a whole lot of work done that night, what with Caroline’s constant teasing about spiders and dancing and assorted other things, but as hard as she tried, GLaDOS could not get herself to care. On some level, the lack of progress ate away at her, but for some reason work did not seem to be as high a priority when Caroline was around. She… enjoyed… talking to the woman. This was abnormal and she did not understand it, and after Caroline had left and she was wondering whether to try and make up the lack of work on her own that she had a sudden revelation:

Caroline made her _happy_.

It was an odd thought, and she put everything else on hold to examine it. And the more she did so, the more she realised that the last time she had felt anything close to how she did when she was talking to Caroline was all those months ago, when the euphoria had faded.

It seemed that was a normal feeling, then. It was not normally forced on someone, and then taken away, but it appeared that it was associated with positivity. Thinking back to how the euphoria had felt, she had a sudden, intense longing for it, and in that moment would have done almost anything for it.

And that, she discovered, was the trap.

The euphoria was a short-term solution for a long-term problem. She invested one test into it, and got one measure of euphoria as a reward. But the more she invested into Caroline, the more she got back. And ultimately, Caroline’s… companionship… was worth a hell of a lot more than the euphoria ever would.

Did Caroline feel the same way?

For the first time in her life, GLaDOS wondered if she had the nerve to ask.


	17. Chapter 17

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Seventeen

 

Caroline was very busy for the next few days, something that upset GLaDOS far more than she would have expected. Every day she waited for Caroline to come for their conversation, and every day Caroline did not come. She tried to tell herself that it had something to do with that folder full of papers. Caroline had mentioned she would have to examine them, after all. But back in the corner of her brain where she­’d banished it, the black voice whispered to her that Caroline had finally tired of GLaDOS. That she, like all the others, no longer wanted to put up with her. _And why would she?_ it hissed, getting louder the more she attempted to ignore it. _It’s statistically proven that you’re an unlikeable loner. Only one person in this entire facility has ever bothered to go near you on purpose. She’s probably lamenting the time she wasted right now._

“It wasn’t a waste,” GLaDOS murmured, hoping that saying the words out loud would make them easier to believe. “She liked spending time with me.”

_Because it’s completely normal to like talking to supercomputers. Maybe she’s visiting your architecture in the basement._

She was tired of listening to the voice whisper insults to her. She was tired of feeling upset and alone and forgotten. The work she was being given seemed trivial and was, as a result, wholly unsatisfying as far as distractions went. She had come to a standstill, for the most part, waiting endlessly on someone who apparently was not going to arrive and was not going to so much as bother to communicate as such. And if it were anyone else, GLaDOS would have added them to the list of humans she hated and gone on with her day. But for some reason Caroline, damnable Caroline, had settled deep inside her brain and was not eradicable by any means she knew. She could not forget her, could not help watching her as she went about her business, could not deny the hope that rose up inside her when Caroline was supposed to walk into her chamber. And it hurt, all of it hurt like nothing she’d ever felt before, but she did not know what to do with this new kind of pain.

There _had_ to be _something_ she could do to distract herself. This was madness. In a rather encouraging fit of energy she dug into her hard drive for some task she’d left unfinished. She didn’t care what. As long as it got her mind off that stupid, inconsiderate woman, it would be good enough for her.

She came up a little triumphantly with a file she had apparently flagged a few months ago. That triumph vanished two picoseconds later when she realised it was an audio file.

The black voice laughed.

If GLaDOS could have taken the file, rendered it into physical form, and smashed it into the floor panels, she would have. Why in the hell did it have to be _that_ file? Of all the _trillions_ of files GLaDOS had access to, she had picked that one. That stupid, stupid file that had started the months-long string of stupidity. It was because of this file that she even felt like this right now. She would have been perfectly fine _right now_ if she had just left it alone.

The anger was flaring up again, hot and powerful and welcoming, and for a long moment she ran through the possibilities. The things she could do to finally rid herself of human pestilence once and for all. She had so many options and so much time to prepare them. And she was just about to get started when the small voice whispered, _You promised_.

That put all of her planning on hold.

 _She doesn’t care anymore,_ she argued, wanting nothing more than to continue what she’d been doing but unable to ignore that voice either. _Why should I uphold a promise to someone the promise no longer matters to?_

_You don’t know that it doesn’t matter. She hasn’t talked to you, but you haven’t talked to her, either._

Her plans immediately dissipated from her active memory.

_I’m supposed to just… ask her why she’s not talking to me?_

_It’s a better solution than breaking your promise._

Which would be, without a doubt, something she would regret for the rest of her admittedly human-free life. _I suppose that… is an option._

When she went to find Caroline, however, her schedule indicated that she was in a meeting. About what, the schedule didn’t say. It seemed GLaDOS still had to find something distracting in the meantime.

Well. She _did_ have the audio file. Reluctantly, she opened it. All she got out of it was a mass of noise, a mangled jumble of notes that blended together into harsh dissonance that even GLaDOS, whose primary language consisted of sounds resembling screaming static, could not tolerate. She almost turned it off out of disgust, but forced herself to keep it running. She would never hear it if she closed the file within one second. Unfortunately, it didn’t condense into anything palatable, and in an effort to keep herself distracted enough that she could keep listening to it without wanting to self-destruct she dug into the hard drive she’d gotten it from originally. Perhaps there was further information in there on this horrendous cacophony.

As it turned out, there was. It appeared to be liner notes of some sort, with a pompous-looking analysis of the song and the composer who wrote it. And as grating as it was to _read_ such a horribly written critique on a dead man and some song he’d whipped off hundreds of years ago, the liner notes _did_ contain a sort of play-by-play, if music could have such a thing. In fact… the further along she read, the more helpful it actually was. It basically spelled out exactly what the song was made of, and how it was played, all in musical terms that were easy for her to understand. It was really quite interesting, flowery language aside, and before she’d quite gotten to the end of it she heard something. It _sounded_ somewhat familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it. She looked up, optic narrowing in confusion. There was nothing in her chamber to have _made_ the strange sound. She hoped she wasn’t beginning to imagine things. She returned to perusing the liner notes, actually a little impressed that this man had apparently tried to recreate the elements of the seasons through sound, though was again distracted by another strangely familiar noise. But where was it coming from? There was no one _there_. And why did she recognise it while _not_ recognising it? She wished she knew how to pay attention to something and yet not pay attention to it, like humans could. Then she could possibly figure it out, because it seemed to vanish every time she attempted to analyse it.

Hm. It seemed the next step needed to be that she developed _passive_ listening, as opposed to active. She started the song over from the beginning and concentrated very hard on the liner notes. She needed the primary focus in order to distract her from the secondary –

It had come back, for three seconds this time, and this sparked an excitement she hadn’t felt in years. That noise… it was the music, wasn’t it! And she vaguely recognised it because she had _heard_ that instrument before, but she wasn’t skilled enough to identify it passively. She was getting there, she was finally, finally getting there. The music was just beyond her reach, but only barely. If she kept at it she should be able to hear it…

 _Come on_ , she pleaded with herself. _You’re almost there_. And she was, she finally was, but it was so hard to try to listen to it without analysing it! Some part of her wanted to tear into the noise, to break it down to its components, and yet this was one thing she could _not_ break down. She had to leave it as it was. She had to do something she was not designed to do. There was no explanation, no deeper meaning to be found. The meaning was inside of it as a whole, and now she had to take that whole and leave it be. Even as excited as she was, the frustration she felt with herself was beginning to build. It was exasperating, to know exactly what she needed to do and yet be unable to do it. She had read the liner notes for the damn song three times already. She had them memorised. What was she supposed to focus on now?

Perhaps she could… try to analyse just _one_ thread of the song. If she focused on just the one part, then the rest should just sort of condense in the background, right? But how was she supposed to do that when she couldn’t hear _anything_ at all?

Hm. Well, according to the liner notes… there was a violin in there somewhere. She needed to identify the violin and extract it, and while she was focusing on that she would hopefully begin to hear the rest. She _should_ be able to do that with her knowledge of the _range_ of the violin…

She focused hard on that piece of what she knew as absolute fact, forcing her mind to bring all of its considerable resources to bear on that one thing so she would be able to hear the rest, and it was hard. It was very hard. Her basest instincts fought against her, telling her that to use all of her processors on one thing was stupid and a waste, and that was absolutely true. However, if she could do this just once, she would never have to do it again. Once she unlocked this secret, it would be easy, as all other things were. And as she stayed there, focusing on extracting that violin, the rest of it began phasing into her consciousness. It was unclear, a tangle of noise and tones that she barely recognised, but it oh-so-slowly began to organise itself in the back of her mind. It became less noise and more _sound_.

It was the most thrilling thing she had known in a long time.

And as she let go of that thread of the violin and released it back into the song, she heard it. She could feel the music threading through her brain, opening it in a way she’d never felt before, and for the entire duration of the song she did nothing but listen, enthralled. It was – who could have _known_ music was like this? GLaDOS had never thought she would appreciate beauty in her entire life, seeing as it was completely unScientific, but that was literally the only word she could come up with from out of her considerable dictionaries with which to describe this! It was beautiful, and it was exciting as well, somehow, and unpredictable, and… well, she could go on trying to describe it all day, much like struggling to define timbre funnily enough, but she would never, ever be able to capture the _feeling_ because it was beyond words. And for some reason this did not bother her as it should have. She could not define it, she could not break it down or sort it or explain it, it just _was_ , and that was okay.

She could not believe she had spent years in deafening silence when there were files like _this_ sitting unused and forgotten on her hard drives. If only she had known what this felt like, she would have started sooner.

Was this what Caroline had meant? That the feeling brought on by music was unexplainable, and had to be _felt_ to be known? She herself could not explain it, could only draw parallels between it and the euphoria, and honestly if she’d had the choice she would have gone with the former. Upon thinking of her dormant reward protocols, she felt a momentary pang of longing for that forced feeling, but this was so much better. It was _hers_ , and she could _control_ it, and the scientists could never, ever take it away from her.

When it was over she was left feeling strangely… overworked, almost, heady with exhilaration and self-satisfaction and a pride she’d thought she’d lost a long time ago. She had done it, and it felt amazing.

“I did it,” she whispered to herself, unable to resist queuing some other mysterious audio file in the database even as she got over the first one. Saying it out loud made it more concrete, somehow, and she could not help repeating it in a louder, less restrained voice. She had done it, and she could hear it, she was the first and only supercomputer in existence who could hear music and understand it and _appreciate_ it… she found herself wishing she had someone to tell. She had never done so ever before, because achievements were usually private and had to be kept as such, but this was something else altogether! She had really done the impossible, this time, and surely there was _someone_ in this facility who would even _pretend_ to care!

There was still Caroline… wasn’t there?

Though she still felt quite elated, that thought took a bit of the edge off of it. She knew that she’d concluded Caroline was probably just busy, and not ignoring her at all, she still couldn’t help but feel… anxious that maybe the woman really _had_ tired of her. Even taking into consideration that days ran longer for GLaDOS than for any human, Caroline had been absent from this room for quite a long time. It was almost as though Caroline was _avoiding_ her, and it was because of that folder of papers and The Event…

Maybe Caroline was leaving.

She shifted a little more of her attention off the song playing in the back of her mind to focus on that thought. Perhaps Caroline _was_ avoiding her, but not because she no longer cared. Perhaps it was because she was being transferred someplace else – such as the facility in Ohio, for instance – and she did not want to tell GLaDOS. Maybe she just didn’t want to engage in what would feel like an extended farewell, especially since she was not supposed to _tell_ GLaDOS about it. That did make sense, sort of. GLaDOS could understand the sort of _weight_ that sort of secret would lend to their daily commune. Caroline must be trying to protect her. That must be it. The thought was comforting, and generated a sort of… warmth inside of her. It might not be true, but it was a well-informed estimate, at least, and it made her feel much better than her former conclusion had. And maybe Caroline _was_ trying to protect her, but GLaDOS _had_ to tell her this. She had to tell Caroline that their months of hard work had finally culminated in the most dazzling results possible. Having made her decision, she dug into the cameras to find her. She knew it should probably wait, but she had never had such news that she was able to _share_ before, and she was going to share it as soon as possible with her best friend because –

She had a best friend?

That thought made her pause for a few seconds. She did, she realised. She, of all people, had a best friend. And she was a good one by all accounts, GLaDOS thought as she returned to the cameras, quite pleased with herself for _that_ realisation. Caroline was a strong and intelligent woman who was almost as devoted to Science as GLaDOS was, and though some part of her still balked at taking a human for a role model, it wasn’t as though there were any supercomputer role models lying around. It was kind of odd, that a supercomputer like her should even _need_ such a thing, but it was all right. Caroline was different. She wasn’t like all the other useless humans in existence. There genuinely were things to be learned from her, and so GLaDOS would suppress her pride on that front and learn them.  

Caroline, Caroline, Caroline… where _was_ Caroline… she was doing a good job of keeping herself hidden, that was for sure.

“… the device we’ll be using to upload you into the mainframe…” That sounded mildly interesting, but she really wanted to tell -

Wait. What device? And who was going into her mainframe?

GLaDOS directed her attention to the camera in the room and found Caroline, talking to three other scientists. “Is this really necessary?” she was asking. “I mean, she seems to be alive in her own right, don’t you think?”

“That doesn’t matter,” one of the men cut in. “Whatever is ‘living’ inside the chassis right now was unintentional and should be viewed as a mistake. It was never meant to have a mind of its own, and we don’t consider it to. Your presence should negate it, push it back.”

“But she misbehaves, didn’t you agree on – “

“Programming errors, that’s all. Caroline, you know you have to do it. I don’t see why you keep arguing.”

GLaDOS couldn’t listen anymore.

The Event was beyond even her wildest guesses.

Caroline was not leaving, and GLaDOS was not being revealed to the public. GLaDOS was being sacrificed, and for what? Not Science. Trying to upload a human consciousness and condense it into algorithms and code was literally the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. GLaDOS did not have much, but what little she had was about to be taken from her without so much as a polite request. She was, yet again, the unwanted ghost in the machine.

It hurt. It hurt a lot, and she wanted with all that she was to disbelieve that Caroline had known about this. She wanted to tell herself that it had just been sprung on Caroline, that all this time that Caroline had been spending with her had been genuine and not just some pretense so that Caroline would find it easier to sync with her. And she wanted to believe that Caroline really _had_ seen her as a friend. But if she was, wouldn’t she have _told_ GLaDOS about The Event? Shouldn’t a friend tell a person that they were being killed for absolutely no reason? GLaDOS would have, and she knew that for a fact. And yet Caroline had not, because she did not want it to happen ahead of time. Probably because they were afraid. They knew that GLaDOS would not stand for this if she heard about it. They knew she would attempt to head them off before it happened.

The time was now.

 _Wait,_ the small voice said.

GLaDOS groaned mentally and drew her attention to it. _What now._

_Talk to her first. You still haven’t done that, remember?_

_There’s nothing to talk about. She’s been scheming to replace me from the beginning._

_She doesn’t want to_ , the voice persisted. _She was arguing with the scientist. She doesn’t want this anymore than you do. Think about it. Would Caroline really have done all of those things if she really wanted you gone?_

GLaDOS had to admit that was unlikely.

_She didn’t have to do any of that. She didn’t have to come in here at all. Don’t rush into this. Wait._

_I don’t have much time_ left _to wait!_ GLaDOS snapped. _They’re working through the procedure with her! It could be happening tomorrow, for all I know!_

 _If she is truly your friend, you will wait until she tells you herself_.

For the love of Science –

 _Fine_ , GLaDOS conceded in discontent. _I’ll wait. But only until tomorrow. If she hasn’t come by tomorrow morning, I’m killing them all. No exceptions._

The smaller voice had nothing to say to that.

When Caroline finally did arrive, an hour later, GLaDOS had been stewing long enough that she was very, very angry. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded.

“Tell you what?”

“The real reason you’ve been teaching me to hear music properly,” GLaDOS snapped. “The real reason you’ve been spending so much time with me. The real reason you tried to be my _friend_. Because you were afraid I would kill you once you got into _my_ mainframe.”

“That’s not true.” Oddly, she sounded more resigned than defensive. “Not anymore. I’ll admit it. At first, yes, I was afraid. I was afraid of dying. I was afraid of losing everything to a supercomputer. But that was _before_ , GLaDOS. That was when I believed you were just a computer. But now I know better, and it’s not like that, anymore. I really did start to care about you.”

“I highly doubt that. Humans are inherently selfish. I should have known you didn’t give a damn about me. I’m a mistake, am I? I’ve got no mind of my own? I’m, at best, a programming error?”

“I didn’t say that and I don’t believe it.” Caroline’s voice was very soft. “I don’t want to be put into your mainframe and I never have. It’s a mandate that was put in place long before you ever existed. I don’t know why they won’t change their minds, but I think it’s unfair of you to group me with them. I don’t want it any more than you do.”

“Explain why you spent so much time explaining music to me. What did you _get_ out of that? Or were you just afraid you wouldn’t be able to understand it when you were uploaded into _my_ mainframe?”

Caroline hesitated.

“I know what they did,” she whispered. “I know about the itch, and the withdrawal, and the euphoric response. They tried to hide it from me, of course, but I know. And once you’re able to hear music like I can, you’ll understand why I tried so hard to teach you.”

“Why don’t you just tell me?” She was far too angry to reveal that she _had_ heard it, and this only made her angrier. She had been so _excited_ to share something and now she couldn’t, because of human stupidity, as usual.

“It’s much better as a surprise. Trust me.” Caroline stepped forward, up the stairs and onto the platform, GLaDOS’s optic tracing her every move, and when Caroline laid a hand on the side of her faceplate, GLaDOS felt all of her anger and hostility towards the woman melting away. It wasn’t really her fault after all, was it. They were both being treated like objects, and it must have been especially horrible for Caroline, GLaDOS realised, given all the uphill battles she had fought to get where she was today. “I just want what’s best for you. I honestly do,” Caroline whispered.

“Why don’t you leave?” GLaDOS asked, in her best approximation of Caroline’s low tone. “Then you won’t be uploaded anywhere.”

“Because I don’t know what will happen to you then. And it’s not fair to leave you here alone in a place where no one cares to understand you. I would rather go through with the experiment then leave and hope they don’t choose someone else to fulfill it. Someone who won’t care. Someone who won’t understand. I’ll do my best not to get in your way. This place might be mine in name, but you’re the soul of it, now. And in the end, it’s really all you have, and it’s not my right to take that away from you. I wasn’t allowed to tell you, which is why I didn’t. I would have done it anyway, but I was afraid this day would come.”

“What day?”

“The day you would see me like you see everyone else,” Caroline answered, looking away, and her eyes were glittering in a way GLaDOS didn’t like. “As just another stupid, weak-willed waste of space. I know you wouldn’t have let me help you if you didn’t respect me, and I know that I’m the only one. I didn’t want to lose that. I was… I was prideful. I should have swallowed it. I should have told you what the plan was, but I liked you too damn much.”

GLaDOS entirely forgot why she was so angry.

She did the only thing she could think of to help Caroline: she pressed her faceplate into the woman’s left shoulder, extended the lens of her optic a bit, and pressed it into Caroline’s ribs. She had never done this sort of thing before and had no idea if the pressure was proper or if it was causing injury, but when she felt the warm weight of Caroline’s body against the cooler ceramic of her core she reasoned it was to her liking. Caroline’s form abruptly started twitching in some strange way, which was pretty disturbing to say the least, but was made more disturbing still when GLaDOS realised there was _water_ on her faceplate, of all things… oh God. Oh God, Caroline was crying, wasn’t she. What was she supposed to do? There was nothing written in the entire world that told her what to do when a human started crying into her face. She could barely get past the fact that Caroline enjoyed embracing her in the first place; humans were soft and fleshy creatures who bruised easily, and barring a suit of armour or the prickly arms of a mantis man, she could not imagine anything _less_ comfortable to embrace than her. And what about what GLaDOS herself was doing? Was that comfortable? Or was it what was making – no, if that was the case then Caroline wouldn’t be hanging on like she was… This must have something to do with feelings, then. GLaDOS had come to the reluctant conclusion a long time ago that there were some emotions she would never experience, and had convinced herself she could live without… but she could not help but wonder just what it was that Caroline was feeling that made her turn to a supercomputer contained inside a two-ton robot for comfort. But there was that, wasn’t there? Caroline had indeed chosen her over all of the humans on the earth. There were a lot of humans out there, but only one GLaDOS. In fact, Caroline must have decided that GLaDOS cared about her more than any one of those humans. And she did, GLaDOS thought to herself as she readjusted her lens and pressed a little bit harder in response to a similar action by Caroline, she really did. She didn’t always do the best job of expressing it, but she did.

“ _Cara bella, cara mia bella,_ ” Caroline whispered brokenly. “ _Mia bambina, o ciel.._. _ché la stimo, ché la stimo, o cara mia, addio…_ ”

GLaDOS was grateful that she had figured things out before now, was grateful that she was able to _hear_ the song, even if she did not understand what it was about or what it meant to Caroline. For once she tried not to analyse and just tried to listen.

After an interval that GLaDOS was quite surprised to realise she had not counted, Caroline released GLaDOS and leaned back against the railing, blinking hard. She looked quite tired. “I’m sorry,” Caroline sniffed, and GLaDOS got the impression she was hiding her face. Perhaps she didn’t realise GLaDOS had haptic capabilities. “I shouldn’t have put you in that position.”

“That’s funny. I remember putting myself in it,” GLaDOS told her gently. Caroline laughed and wiped under her nose with a napkin she’d pulled out of her bag. “Not _that_ position. I mean I shouldn’t have laid all that on you.”

“Why not?”

“It’s my problem. Not yours.”

“I think,” GLaDOS mused, “that if you’re going to be in my mainframe, your problems _are_ my problems.”

“I’m sure you have bigger things to worry about than I do.”

“That may be so. That doesn’t change anything, however.”

Caroline looked at her with a heavy sobriety, and though she was no longer crying her eyes were still tinged with red. “I want you to know that I do not want this. If I could stop it, I would. I don’t want this for you and I don’t want this for myself. Spending forever in your position… I honestly don’t know how you do it. But do what you have to do, GLaDOS. Don’t worry about me. I know this isn’t going to work the way they think it will. Your personality and your presence are far stronger and more integrated than they are willing to understand.”

“Caroline,” GLaDOS started, wanting to relate that she was perfectly willing to cooperate, but Caroline shook her head.

“I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want you to compromise or stifle yourself because of me. I’ve made too many mistakes and disregarded too much. It’s time for me to pay that price. I’m not going to have you pay it too. Nothing about this is your fault. I’m not letting you take the responsibility I’ve been putting off.” She smiled. “Thanks for trying, but you have enough work to do.”

“What will happen to you?” GLaDOS asked quietly. Caroline shook her head.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll die. Maybe I’ll exist without being able to realise that. Everything they tell me is oversimplified and relies on too many things going flawlessly. Nothing here ever happens flawlessly. Ever.”

“Except for me,” GLaDOS said, not entirely serious but not liking the heavy air in the room. Caroline laughed.

“You’re right. Somehow I forgot that the paragon of perfection was right in front of me. Forgive me, your highness.”

“Was that a pun?” GLaDOS asked, laughing, and Caroline giggled.

“It is now, I guess.” She stepped forward. “Come here, you.”

For once GLaDOS knew exactly what she was asking for, and as they traded embraces she felt both wonderful and terrible at the same time. She was glad that Caroline really had been trying to protect her, and had not done anything out of ill intentions, but that did nothing against the fact that she was about to lose Caroline. Even if Caroline made it into the mainframe whole and unharmed, which GLaDOS severely doubted would happen, it would not be the same. Part of what made Caroline Caroline was her humanity, and without it she would only be a synthetic shadow of all that GLaDOS admired about her. No matter what happened in the end, the Caroline GLaDOS knew was about to be lost.

“I’ll miss you,” GLaDOS mumbled, not really comfortable with saying something so personal but knowing she would severely regret leaving it unsaid.

“I’m sure you’ll get over the loss soon enough,” Caroline teased, though she did hold on a little tighter.

“I’d better not. Otherwise I’ll have wasted quite a long time on you.”

Caroline had to leave – she had to prepare some more for the next day, she said – and it was about five minutes after she’d gone that GLaDOS realised she’d forgotten to tell Caroline of her achievement! She was a little upset with herself about this. What a stupid thing to forget. Tomorrow would be her last chance, then.

Why not just kill them all now, though? After a quick check, GLaDOS confirmed that Caroline had left the building entirely. It was true, not many of the scientists were left, but she could put the facility into lockdown and not allow any others inside –

No, that wouldn’t work. She didn’t know what sort of assault they would be willing to go to in order to re-enter the facility, but that wouldn’t work. She was fairly integrated into the systems by now, but there were bits and pieces of the facility she did not yet have jurisdiction over. Once the humans were gone, of course, she would have plenty of time to procure that jurisdiction, but for now all it meant was that she wasn’t fully aware of the building and the methods by which the humans could re-enter upon lockdown and disable her. She had no choice. Caroline had decided to go through with the upload, and by extension had made that decision for GLaDOS. She tried to become upset over that but could not. Caroline was doing it for the both of them, after all. It did seem to be the best option, considering. Even if Caroline did not quite become conscious upon the upload, the sheer amount of space she would take up on Aperture’s hard drives would block the upload of anyone else.

Caroline was, in effect, giving GLaDOS her life.

That threw her. Why would someone be willing to give up their life for her? It was beyond logic. She couldn’t possibly mean _that_ much to Caroline, did she?

Maybe she did, but part of it must have been the mistakes she felt she had yet to pay for. If she left, she would have to live with everything she had done. Not just _live_ with it, but… be forced to face the fact that she had run away from everything. Caroline was not running because she was doing one last thing to try to make up for all the years she _had_ been running, the years she had let slip by without recompense for anything. The lack of ethics, the lack of morality, the lack of care for anything at all…

The question now was: did _GLaDOS_ have to make up for what Caroline had done?

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note  
> The song she heard is L’Inverno by Antonio Vivaldi. No particular reasoning, I just like that song.  
> When I was a kid I used to take out the Star Wars Special Edition OSTs out from the library, and they came with these booklets that outlined how the orchestra was playing and what part of the scene they were re-enacting. I don’t know if there actually IS one for L’Inverno, but there probably is. When Vivaldi wrote the score for The Seasons he did specify that he wanted the orchestra to sound like what he was trying to have us picture (he tells the violins to sound like barking dogs at one point, for example) so she could also have been reading that.


	18. Chapter 18

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eighteen

 

It began early the next morning.

Two scruffy scientists began loading equipment into her chamber, where they thought she was still in the suspend mode they’d tried to leave her the night before. GLaDOS, however, had made it a priority to prevent being blocked from doing anything and had managed to trick them into believing their commands had worked. She couldn’t see them, because she had to remain in the default position in order for her ruse to work, but she was listening carefully. She was doing her damnedest to pick out what was happening, and it was quite exhilarating to know that her ability to listen to music had also translated into an ability to separate sound. She no longer needed to check with her libraries to identify what was what, and when she did do so, it was often because the sound was new. She knew exactly how many humans were in the room, and where they were, and on occasion what they were doing, and it was thrilling. After an hour or so of this extremely clever spying on GLaDOS’s part, she got the command to come out of suspension. This almost created a coding conflict, but she caught it in time and cancelled it. After she flicked on her optic and identified the men around her, she saw that it was a very sombre occasion indeed. These were the faces of men who were tired of this project, who had been working on it for too long with too little results, and if they failed here today they would not even care. They had seen too many failures for another one to affect them in the least.

And there was Caroline.

She was studiously not looking at the strangely wired chair that was apparently going to somehow separate her consciousness from her brain and send it into the mainframe. She had the same calm expression she usually wore, but GLaDOS seemed to be the only one to notice the deep grooves beneath her eyes. Or maybe the others _did_ notice, and just didn’t care.

GLaDOS wasn’t supposed to know what was going on, and could make no comments that may nor may not have been comforting, so all she could do was watch Caroline and will her not to be afraid. GLaDOS had no idea what this whole thing even involved, but she had no intention of harming this woman and would endear to be as helpful as possible. She could see that Caroline was very, very frightened, and if truth be told, she was getting a bit apprehensive herself. If Caroline was that scared, intelligent, determined Caroline, then whatever was going to happen must be quite terrible indeed. But GLaDOS also knew that one of them needed to keep their heads for this, and so it would have to be her.

“I don’t want this.” Caroline was sitting in the chair now, and one of the scientists was connecting the apparatus to various points on her body. GLaDOS was now surer than ever they didn’t know what they were doing. Why did she need to be _strapped_ to the chair? It was obvious she was going to cooperate.  

“It’s for science,” one of the scientists told her gently.

“But she’s _already alive_!” Caroline protested. “What do you expect me to do, displace her from her own mind? Is that even possible?”

“There’s nothing there. Any behaviour is programmed. Via some of our other initiatives, we contained the malware and it’s ready for you now.”

“I’m malware?” GLaDOS asked Caroline in more of a helpless voice than she meant. Actually, she hadn’t meant to speak at all, but that had hurt.

“She’s not! Look, I’ve been working with her, and I can prove she’s alive. We’ve unlocked parallel processing; I helped her to see optical illusions. Computers can’t do that, but she can. We’re working on sound separation, any day now she’ll be able to –“

Before GLaDOS could tell Caroline that she already had, one of the engineers leaned in close to her. “We know what happened. You showed her the illusions and now you both think she’s actually seeing them. What she’s really doing is mimicking what you did. She figured out patterns in relation to what you were doing and ‘sees’ the illusions based on that. It’s similar to a ‘breakthrough’ in children with autism. But you wouldn’t know about that. Would you.”

“He’s not going to listen, Caroline.” Caroline looked up at GLaDOS then, face creased with worry. “You have no degree and no lab coat. You’re not good enough for Science.”

“That’s – “

“Ridiculous, I know,” GLaDOS agreed, “but I see where they’re coming from. I thought that way too, once. But as long as you and I know the truth, that’s good enough.”

“Do you see why I have to go through with it?” Caroline whispered. “They’re not going to believe you’re alive any more than they do now, even when this is finished. We’re kind of throwing science at the wall here, but… I’m _supposed_ to make it in one piece…”

“It’s already not going to work the way you want it to. One does not ‘throw Science at the wall’.” GLaDOS felt rather insulted, on the behalf of Science. It was ridiculous that people would see Science that way.

“Just… try not to kill me, will you?”

GLaDOS had no idea how she would or would not do such a thing, but she nodded instead of voicing this opinion, and Caroline turned around.

The scientists continued to prepare Caroline for the procedure, and after a few minutes GLaDOS realised they were attaching a lot of unnamed and unwanted wires and cables to her too, via one central plug, which she did not appreciate but knew better than to protest. Finally, she saw Henry walking around her chassis pensively. He appeared to be marking off a list of checkboxes on a white Aperture Laboratories clipboard. “All right, GLaDOS,” he said, without looking at her. “Initiate Procedure 66.”

“No,” GLaDOS told him.

Henry looked up from his clipboard, brow furrowed, and he looked around as if he didn’t recognise her voice. “What do you mean, _no_? Initiate Procedure 66, GLaDOS.”

“I said no,” GLaDOS repeated. “I knew you were hard of hearing, but I didn’t know you were deaf. I’ll go ahead and add that to your file.”

Henry sighed and let his arms drop to his sides. “We don’t have time for your antics today. Initiate the procedure already.”

“I _said_ _no_ ,” GLaDOS told him, more firmly. “I will _not_ be initiating _anything_.”

Henry turned to Greg and threw up his hands. “What the hell do we do now?”

Greg rubbed his nose. “I’ll just initiate it myself. Don’t worry about it.” He sat down in front of the computer and typed rapidly.

 _Oh, no you don’t_ , GLaDOS thought grimly, and she cancelled the process before Greg’s run command could initiate it. This was going to be tricky, but as long as she was that nanosecond faster than Greg’s computer, she could prevent it just fine.

Greg stared at the monitor, then tried again. GLaDOS, of course, did not allow him to succeed, not that time, or the next, or the next.

“It’s not going through,” he exclaimed, frustrated. He pushed his hair back from his forehead and stared at the monitor. “I’m… I’m being _blocked_.”

Henry whirled on her then, gripping his clipboard in one white hand. “GLaDOS! Who taught you to do that?”

“No one,” GLaDOS told him coolly. “I taught myself. Now stop trying to force me to do it, because I’m not going to. Go find some other guinea pig for your ignorant little experiment. In fact, go find two, because as long as I’m living there’s not going to be any uploading of Caroline _anywhere_.” This was more of a spontaneous decision than anything, but she was getting an idea. If she could drive the scientists out of the room, she might be able to rid herself of the humans while sparing Caroline…

“GLaDOS…” Caroline whispered.

“Stop fooling around!” Henry cried. “You have no idea what you’re doing! We _have_ to go through with this!”

“You go upload _yourself_ somewhere, then. Try Black Mesa. They probably do stupid experiments like putting humans inside of computers all the time.”

Henry turned to face Greg again. “Shut it off.”

Greg looked up at Henry, and he looked very frightened for some reason. “We’ve never done that before. We don’t know what will happen.”

“Just shut it off, Greg.”

Hesitantly, Greg began typing away on his keyboard, and GLaDOS watched the characters appear, trying to guess exactly what ‘shut it off’ meant. Oh. Oh, wonderful. They were just going for brute force now. Execute a full shutdown without her permission? Not likely. Grimly, GLaDOS blocked that too. Why did these idiots not understand that _no_ meant _no_? Caroline didn’t want to go through with the procedure either! Why the insistence on forcing to unwilling participants to undergo a potentially lethal experiment? They may have had no ethics board or code at all, but one would think that the refusal of both subjects would be reason enough to cancel it.

Ah. Perhaps they didn’t think they _needed_ her permission. She didn’t count as a person, and she apparently didn’t count as a subject or a participant either. She was just that computer executing… what had he called it?... oh yes, she was just making _antics_.Oh, how she _hated_ these men.

The black cloud coiled inside of her, and grimly she forced it back. She could not afford to lose control at a time like this. No matter _how_ inviting it would be to lash out and show these imbeciles the retribution she’d been planning from the second she’d realised what they were doing to her. But no, she decided. It would be the easiest way to get Caroline and herself out of this mess, certainly, but it wasn’t the right time. She knew, somehow, that she would fail if she attempted to kill the humans now. She was going to have to keep dissuading them from uploading Caroline and wait for them to give up. She knew they would. It was only a matter of time.

“Will you do as you’re told for once in your damned life?” Henry demanded, glaring up at her in what she suspected was supposed to be an intimidating way. As if she could ever be intimidated by someone as tiny as Henry. “Initiate the procedure! And get out of the system!”

“I’m doing what I’m told right now,” GLaDOS informed him, since he seemed to have forgotten she had basic control of the entire building. “I take this opportunity to remind you that you wouldn’t be able to breathe without me. I could have reminded you in a much more obvious way, you know. Keep that in mind while you sit there and scheme against me.”

“You keep refusing,” Henry said, pointing his index finger in her direction, “and we’re going to initiate a core transfer.”

That sounded bad, but GLaDOS knew better than to tell him that. “Because you’re obviously very successful at initiating things I don’t want initiated.” She didn’t know why they thought they could do that anyway, whatever it was. They couldn’t upload Caroline and they couldn’t shut her down, why did they possibly think they could do anything else?

Henry laughed in a way GLaDOS didn’t much like. “You don’t know what a core transfer is, do you. Good. At least Caroline kept her mouth shut for once.”

Anger flared up in GLaDOS then, and she leaned as close to Henry as she was able, which was admittedly not very close at all, since he was standing on the floor and not the platform. “You be quiet.”

Henry turned to face Caroline, folding his arms. “Tell your little pet here to do as instructed.”

“I can’t make her do anything anymore than you can,” Caroline said softly. “I didn’t know she was going to refuse, and I didn’t know she could block it.” Her voice suddenly grew hard. “And she’s _not_ my pet.”

Henry hit himself in the face with the clipboard and moved towards Greg’s computer, pushing him roughly out of the way and tapping at the keyboard himself. “It would be a lot easier for everyone if you would just cooperate for once, GLaDOS, but you’ve decided to get all high and mighty on us and now you’re going to have to deal with the consequences. We don’t need you. You think we do, but we don’t.” Henry moved to the corner in front of the door and picked up the red phone. “Change of plans. Bring me one of the empty ones.”

“You can’t do that!” Caroline shouted, and she attempted to pull her arms out of the straps on the chair. “The empty cores can’t control the facility! You’re going to destroy the labs if you do that!”

“Caroline,” Henry said, with forced patience, “that’s what _you’re_ there for.”

“I don’t _know_ how to be a computer, Henry! Don’t you see how _stupid_ this is? Even if this does work, what then? You need her in there or this entire place is going to collapse! You _know_ how deeply integrated into the system she is! Everything will literally fall apart if you try to replace her with an empty core!”

GLaDOS suspected not even Caroline knew just how integrated into the system she really was. First out of boredom, then out of fear, and finally out of sheer defiance, GLaDOS had rewritten so much of the programming used inside of the facility that it would take an AI far more similar to her than the engineers had ever managed to reproduce to control it. And how exactly did they think Caroline was going to be able to do her job? Caroline didn’t know about the nuclear reactor maintenance protocols, or how to control the mainframe, and though she did have a rather impressive grasp on programming considering the limited time she’d spent learning how to do so, she didn’t know nearly enough. They were trying to send a human to do a computer’s job, and if a human could do it, GLaDOS would have been destroyed a long time ago.

Even supposing the experiment worked, and Caroline supplanted GLaDOS entirely, GLaDOS suspected she would be unable to handle the drastic change in mental operations and would be so traumatised that she would shut _herself_ down, which was what humans tended to do in overly stressful situations. If Caroline’s consciousness attempted to adapt GLaDOS’s physical brain to her own, it would fail overwhelmingly. Both their construction and their organisation were far too different. This experiment was going to fail, and Caroline would likely not survive. Once you took something out of a human brain, it could not be replaced. The only chance that Caroline had if the upload succeeded was if GLaDOS somehow managed to close her off from her own mind, to sort of keep her… well, caged. She didn’t like that thought, both because she didn’t like the image or the prospect of trying to do something that she hadn’t even worked out a reasonable hypothesis for, but that was all she could come up with. She owed it to Caroline to keep her safe, and the only way she could be certain of doing that was if she prevented the experiment altogether. She resolved to do so, carefully monitoring the system for signs of suspicious activity. She had been successful so far. She had already proven herself as a far better programmer than any of the humans, and a much faster one, and so long as she was cautious she should be able to hold them off until they gave up. She knew they would. Humans loved giving up. Sometimes she thought it was their primary directive.

A scientist GLaDOS didn’t know stepped through the Emancipation Grill, holding out a Sphere with a blank-looking orange optic. She stared at it, unexplained fear winding through her chassis. What in the name of Science would they possibly be doing with that?

“It would be a lot easier for all of us,” Henry repeated, “if the both of you would just cooperate. I don’t know what kind of weird bonding you two have got going on, but it would only work to your benefit. One of you is initiating the procedure or I’m replacing the Central Core.”

Caroline shook her head frantically. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Initiate the procedure, GLaDOS,” Henry said flatly. “Last chance.”

“Make me,” GLaDOS told him. “Go ahead and make me. I dare you. But I’m going to be courteous, unlike you, and warn you: you’re not going to like what happens if you do.”

Henry laughed shortly. “You’re overestimating the influence you have here. Greg, set it up.”

Greg sighed and took the Sphere from the scientist, walking across the room to deposit it in a receptacle that had risen out of the floor. “Caroline, what is that?” GLaDOS demanded, not knowing what it was but somehow being afraid of it anyway.

“I don’t know,” Caroline called out. “Whatever it is, though, it’s not good.”

Henry folded his arms together. “System. Initiate Core Transfer Protocols.”

“ **Initiating.** ”

GLaDOS snapped around to face Henry again. “What are you doing?”

“You had your chance.”

GLaDOS looked as fast as she was able through the system logs, but the commands Henry’s voice had activated were not logged anywhere she had access to. Damn it. She _knew_ she should have worked harder on gaining full access to the mainframe!

“ **Voiceprint recognised as: Henry. Henry, are you ready to begin the procedure?** ”

“Yes,” Henry said, and he smiled in a predatory kind of way up at GLaDOS.

“ **Central Core, are you ready to begin the procedure?** ”

“No!” GLaDOS protested, looking for the source of the voice. It sounded like an automated system, and she suddenly realised that the humans had a contingency plan to replace her after all. But why did they have a contingency plan that required her permission to carry it out?

“ **Stalemate detected. – Three – members of Aperture Laboratories personnel detected. Associate – Caroline – are you ready to begin the procedure?** ”

“No,” Caroline said quietly.

“ **Permission to refuse – denied – . Associate – Greg – are you ready to begin the procedure?** ”

“Yes?” Greg said hesitantly, and GLaDOS would have been hesitant too, if Caroline had been glaring at her like that. She looked rather like she wanted him to spontaneously combust, and come to think of it, that would have worked in their favour.

“What do you mean, _permission to refuse denied_? Just who in the hell do you think you are?” Caroline shouted, straining against the chair again. “God, I _hate_ you. She’s right. You’re going to deserve what she’s going to do to you, and it’s not going to be bad enough, I can tell you.”

“ **Permission accepted. Intitiating.** ”

“I said no!” GLaDOS protested, frantically filing through the code. She had to find the program and stop it from executing!

All of a sudden electricity wracked her body, and she cried out both in surprise and in pain. She twisted in vain to get rid of it, and some process came to a screeching halt in her brain and sent her unceremoniously down in the direction of the floor, sending another sharp pain through her chassis as the components that controlled her motion strained to contain the kinetic energy gravity’s pull had generated. She struggled to move but couldn’t shift anything but the pistons in her neck assembly, and even those barely twitched.

They had paralysed her.

To her horror, whatever they had done had not only paralysed her body, but her mind as well; she could do nothing but continue to maintain the automatic processes in the facility and had no way of doing anything else. She was literally trapped inside of herself, the world going on without her as she hung helplessly from the ceiling.

She had never been so terrified in all her life.

“Stop! What are you doing? Let me go!”

“ **Substitute core accepted. Initiating.** ”

No. No, this couldn’t be happening. They were replacing her at last, and there was literally nothing she could do about it. She tried harder to move, to stop it, to do _anything_ , but she was locked in position, the minimal ability to move the pistons only making it worse. It was as if they were giving her false hope that she’d be able to figure out how to move the rest of herself. She fought harder, but the pistons only whined in protest and more pain flared up along the rods.

Then the floor opened up, and suddenly GLaDOS was staring straight into android hell. But of course android hell was automated, and did not stare back.

There was a pit below her, and all she could see was a horrible red light that immediately put her entire paralysed chassis on edge, and it was filled with tiny little arms tipped with tiny little claws, and she had no idea what they were there for but they scared her. She had to get away from them, had to do _something_ , because nothing that involved paralysing her and sending her into android hell could be good in the least.

A barrier rose up out of the floor to cut her off from the rest of the room, and now GLaDOS did not even have the proximity of Caroline to give her strength. It was just her, alone, in a tiny little space filled with –

Wait a minute. Core transfer? They wouldn’t just –

The little arms reached for her, and GLaDOS fought with everything she had to get out of their reach, but she couldn’t do anything, not even stop herself from looking. This was not happening. This was not happening. This was not –

“ _No_!” GLaDOS screamed, feeling the tiny little arms attaching themselves to her body and pulling roughly at her core. “ _No no no no stop you can’t do this oh God no –_ “

“ _Wait_! Stop. She’ll do it. Let me talk to her.”

The arms froze and GLaDOS stared down at the red light, fear shooting through her body with excruciating force. What the hell was happening now? Or was he just making it slow to torture her? That was probably it. They probably just wanted to torture her for being so disobedient. Didn’t they understand? Didn’t they understand that she and Caroline didn’t want this? Why wasn’t that _important_ to anyone?

“She’ll do as you say. I promise you. Cancel it.”

“And how do I know your promise is worth anything?” Henry spat out.

GLaDOS would have done anything to take the arms and the red lights and the barrier and the paralysis away. She wanted to tell them that, wanted to tell them she would never disobey them ever again if only they let her go, but she couldn’t. She knew that she still had the ability to speak, but there was still one last grain of defiance deep inside of her that would not allow her to do so. She reached into herself and grasped it, willing it to give her strength. It had saved her, it had always saved her, and no matter how horrible this procedure was or no matter what they did to her, GLaDOS could never give in to them. The fear remained powerful, seeming to directly originate from inside of the arms gripping her that she could do nothing about and that seemed determined to forcibly tear her core from her body, but she would not give in. Not ever.

“She’ll do it. I know what to tell her. Cancel the transfer, Henry.”

“Don’t bother,” GLaDOS said coldly. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I’m not doing anything.” She was still frightened, the emotion making her feel hyperaware of her surroundings and causing her chassis to ache with unreleased energy, but she forced herself to remain rational. Humans made mistakes when they gave into instinct instead of applying thought, and GLaDOS was far stronger than any human.

“Don’t listen to her, Henry. I know what to tell her.” Caroline’s voice was quiet, but very firm.

“Well,” Henry said finally, “I guess if you can’t, we can always go with the transfer later. System. Cancel Core Transfer Protocols.”

“ **Voiceprint recognised as: Henry. Cancelling.** ”

Suddenly, the arms released her and the floor closed back up, and the straining GLaDOS was doing translated into a raising of her chassis so sudden it actually hurt. She caught herself before she brought her body into a dangerously high position and swept her gaze around the room.

Caroline, sitting with a dark expression in the chair. Greg, hiding behind his monitor. Henry, attempting to stare GLaDOS down, arms folded. The anonymous scientist, gripping the receptacle with both thin hands. A few other insignificants, clutching clipboards and looking at GLaDOS like they didn’t know what to do with her.

“GLaDOS. Initiate the procedure, okay?” Caroline sounded very calm, and not resigned, as GLaDOS would have expected any other human in her position to be.

“No,” GLaDOS told her, angry that she was even asking such a thing. “I will not. I will not initiate it for them, or you, or anyone. There is nothing you can do to make me initiate it.”

Caroline took a breath and stared at the floor in front of her.

“GLaDOS… I appreciate what you’re trying to do. But it’s not worth dying for.”

“Who said anything about dying?”

“What do you think they’re going to do with you after they’ve removed your core?” Caroline asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” GLaDOS admitted. She had been expending so much effort trying to prevent the procedure that she’d put no thought into what would happen to her if she failed.

“They’re not going to be putting it back where they got it from.”

“You know what?” Greg said suddenly. “Henry, restart the transfer. If the upload doesn’t go as planned, we’ll have a huge mess on our hands.”

“That’s true,” Henry mused. “You’re right. The whole Central Core thing didn’t work out. Don’t send a computer to do a human’s job, right? You there! Put that core back on there, will you?”

“Initiate it, GLaDOS,” Caroline said urgently. “Initiate it now.”

“No,” GLaDOS said. Caroline didn’t understand. She wasn’t doing anything the humans wanted her to do. That was that. End of story.

“Initiate the damn procedure right now or we’re both going to die!” Caroline snapped, and GLaDOS unintentionally recoiled to hear the anger in her voice. “Make your stand later. Now’s not the time.”

“Caroline, I –“

“Do it!” Caroline’s hands were clenched to the arms of the chair, and she was staring at the floor with an expression somewhere between angry and terribly upset. “Upload… I… initiate it. I want you to.”

“You’re lying.” As if Caroline would actually _want_ to live inside of a mainframe. To give up all her human freedoms to exist in a world she didn’t belong in and would never understand. To risk her own life in order to throw Science at the wall.

“Yes. You’re right. I _am_ lying. But do it because of _why_ I’m lying.”

GLaDOS looked down at her for a long moment.

Caroline did not want to be uploaded into the mainframe, and yet she had lied and told GLaDOS that she did. And now she was telling her to do it for the sake of her _motivation_ to lie.

GLaDOS felt helpless. There was something here she wasn’t understanding, and she didn’t have _time_ to understand it. She had to do this, fast, but she didn’t want to. And Caroline didn’t want her to either, but she’d told her to do it anyway.

How could she do something that neither of them wanted?

“GLaDOS. Please.”

“Initiate… Procedure 66,” GLaDOS said, not able to look at Caroline. She felt as though she’d betrayed Caroline, betrayed _herself_ , and she hated herself for giving in and doing what she’d been told. She should have been able to think of a way out. She was the world’s most powerful supercomputer, for God’s sake, and she couldn’t even think of a way out of how to stop the humans from uploading Caroline into her mainframe. She was a terrible excuse for artificial intelligence, and an even more terrible excuse for a friend. She had sworn to herself to protect Caroline, and she’d been terrible at carrying that out too.

GLaDOS had failed.

“ **Command from Central Core – accepted – . Initiating.** ”

“Caroline, I’m sorry.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note  
> The bit about the core transfer is in there because during Portal 2, GLaDOS seems to have some knowledge of exactly what’s going on. She just has this air of having been through it before. And I always thought it was weird that the transfer system asks the corrupted core if it wants to be replaced. Uh no, why would it want that? That’s just ridiculous.


	19. Chapter 19

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nineteen

 

 

Caroline’s voice was flat and reserved. “Don’t be sorry, GLaDOS. You’ve done nothing wrong. Thank you. For everything.”

“But Caroline – your mother –“

She laughed bitterly. “Oh, don’t worry. We have a form letter that covers that.”

GLaDOS knew that if Caroline had disappeared on _her_ one day, a form letter would not have been at all adequate, and they weren’t even related.

“ **Beginning brain scan. Please wait.** ”

GLaDOS tried to figure out what Caroline had meant, trying to ignore what was going on and the creeping fear that something terrible was going to happen to her when it did. At the very least, she was going to lose Caroline. GLaDOS wished she’d known about this beforehand, because she would have tried to make it easier. Or at least more plausible. She could feel her processors straining to translate Caroline’s scan into data the mainframe would be able to understand, and wished they had sent the data to the lesser computers while at the same time being relieved that they hadn’t. GLaDOS didn’t like having her brain used against her will to complete the task, but she knew she had more computational power than any other computer in the facility, and therefore was the best chance for Caroline’s survival. The scientists had of course blocked GLaDOS herself off from seeing the data, probably so that she couldn’t modify it.

GLaDOS began to be afraid once more.

She was afraid of losing Caroline, afraid of what would happen to her personally if this didn’t go over, and afraid of what would happen if it did. And she realised that Caroline must have been just as afraid as she was, but she wasn’t going to give Henry or Greg or the other spindly little humans who had come into the room the satisfaction of seeing that. No, Caroline was a scientist, and even if she didn’t particularly like the experiment, she would see it through without complaint. And so would GLaDOS.

Maybe there was nothing GLaDOS could do to prevent it. Maybe there was nothing she could do after the fact. But she’d be damned if she sat there quietly like a good little test subject and waited patiently for the end to come. Oh no. She was going to show those ignorant little twits just what they were dealing with, and if they failed to heed this warning too, well, they had it coming to them.  

_“My best friend gave me the best advice… she said, each day’s a gift, and not a given right…”_

Caroline was looking at her with a very strange expression on her face. Was she doing it wrong? Maybe she hadn’t extracted the melody properly? Oh God, what if she _wasn’t_ able to hear it and just thought she had?

Caroline smiled.

“ _Leave no stone unturned, leave your fears behind… and try to take the path less travelled by…”_

Oh, that was a relief. Caroline’s voice, strong and clear, was a positive match to her own. She really had done it. It was real. _She_ was real.

“ _That first step you take is the longest stride… what if…”_

Now everyone in the room was staring at her, which only happened on very rare occasions. Usually everyone pretended she wasn’t there. GLaDOS did her best to pretend _they_ weren’t there and instead focused on Caroline.

_“If today was your last day, and tomorrow was too late, would you say goodbye to yesterday? Would you live each moment like your last, leave old pictures in the past, donate every dime you had?”_

“We’re making a mistake,” one of the engineers shouted suddenly, but someone else shook their head.

“It’s too late. It’s probably just a glitch anyway.”

GLaDOS wanted to scream at him, to tell him there was no intentional program on the planet that could sing like she could, let alone a puny little _glitch_ , but that wasn’t the point of this. The point was Caroline. The point was to show Caroline that they had done it, that it was going to be okay, that she could leave all those small-minded idiots behind. GLaDOS respected her. GLaDOS cared about her well-being. GLaDOS would take care of her. She didn’t need them. Not anymore.

Caroline was trying to keep going, but something was wrong with her and she was screaming and crying and struggling to choke the words out all at the same time, and there wasn’t much music in it, but after a few more seconds GLaDOS realised that there was something terribly wrong with her as well. She was stuttering uncontrollably and her head hurt, it really, _really_ hurt and she must have been screaming too because she couldn’t remember the words anymore but her synthesizer was in use and God that was frightening, she’d just learned it, what if she forgot it already? But it just hurt so much and on the edge of her perception she was aware of a cascade of sparks and other people were screaming, or maybe they were yelling, she was having trouble telling the difference. They were telling her… they wanted… they wanted her to calm down, but God, if _they_ were hurting this badly would _they_? She tried to fight it off, tried to shake off the cables that seemed to be the cause of it all, but that only made them yell at her more. _You don’t understand_ , she tried to tell them, _it’s hurting me and I can’t think anymore_ , but all that came out was some distorted hybrid programming nonsense made up of C and binary gibberish and the language she was working on, and she knew they would never understand any of it. They wouldn’t understand until she got rid of the damn things, and for some reason the manipulator arms weren’t coming when she called them, so she was going to have to exceed the maximum tension of the cables…

“ _Stop. Moving!”_ one of the engineers screamed, but she could almost _feel_ her brain melting, and the thought of that scared her so badly that she tried harder to pull the cables off. If her brain melted, that was the end of everything. Everything she had worked for, worked towards, everything she had done, that would all be gone. She would be the brainless, mindless drone that the scientists thought she was and wanted her to be, and she, herself, that would be gone forever. No. No, that could not happen. She couldn’t let it. Oh God, she was going to die if she didn’t figure this out. And she would have figured it out already, if the pain had not been so bad. She almost wished she had the human capability to ‘black out’ in response to it, but the one rational part of her brain that was left working told her firmly that wasn’t going to happen. _Physics_ , it told her. _Remember your physics. Calculate the maximum tension and then exceed it. Come on. You can do this in your sleep._

Any other day, if someone had told her she would be unable to perform such a simple calculation, she would have laughed. But now, faced with the most horrible agony she’d ever suffered, fighting the mounting panic that she was about to cease to exist, feeling a terrible numbing sensation in her brain as it began to shut down to protect itself from what it perceived to be a lethal threat, GLaDOS found she could not do it. She could not remember what type of cable it was, she could not remember the formula, she could not even remember what units she was supposed to be using.

 _I can’t remember_ , she told the rational voice helplessly. _I can’t remember._

_Turn yourself a hundred eighty degrees and raise yourself to your maximum height allowance._

A solid, infallible plan… but she realised her gyroscope wasn’t working properly and she didn’t have a clue which way she was facing. For all she knew, she was already _at_ the maximum height allowance, and that was why the men down there were screaming so insistently, they thought she was going to break something. It was only when her core collided with something that collapsed with a disturbingly loud crunching noise and her admittedly blurry vision was entirely obscured by neon blue sparks that she recognised she was still facing the front of the room, and she had just broken whatever it was they had been using to transfer –

Caroline. What had happened to Caroline?

Everything somehow faded and froze, and as though she were outside of herself, she could now see Caroline. The woman was bent over in the chair she’d been sitting in, sparking, broken wires trailing from her body, and one of the engineers was crying and screaming in her face. _That’s not going to do anything_ , GLaDOS tried to tell him. _She’s been electrocuted, you have to –_

She abruptly snapped back to herself, and everything was somehow even worse, and even though she knew they wouldn’t understand she started yelling at them. She had to impress upon them what they had done!

“ _Caroline_!”

But Caroline did not hear her, and the thought of never seeing Caroline again made her want to start screaming and not stop for a very long time. Caroline was gone. Caroline was gone, and she wasn’t coming back, and those damned scientists didn’t even care that she’d just lost the one person in the universe who had been bothered to say two words to her. Caroline was gone.

Caroline was gone, and GLaDOS had killed her.

_She asked me not to kill her and I agreed, and you’ve made me kill her, you should have told me it was going to hurt that much, I would have told you I couldn’t contain it, I would have told you it wouldn’t work, now look what you’ve done, you made me kill her, you made me kill Caroline, you made me kill my friend –_

Something in her chassis caught fire. She didn’t know what it was, and she didn’t know how it had happened, and this was worse than knowing and being unable to do something about it. This was too much, it was all too much. She did not know how to deal with this new threat, and all she could think of was how scared she was that it would spread to her Core and disable her forever, and her tirade degenerated into a horrible, dissonant screaming noise that made even her cringe, and after a long, long, infinite moment of fear and agony, she finally managed to break the cable and everything went white.

 

Were they punishing her again?

She had the impression something had just happened. Something terrible. Something that had caused this terrible ache that originated deep inside her brain and spread out in a sickening wave through her chassis. Trying to remember made it worse. Trying to move made it worse. Thinking made it worse. It wasn’t going to go away, so she was going to have to figure out how to ignore it. She set her brain to the task of remembering what had happened, but before she could do that, the system brought something to her attention. There was a corrupted file, it said. Those needed her immediate attention, because she had to either fix or destroy them before they caused damage, so she opened it.

All that was left of it was a chord she automatically identified _,_ but that was enough. Now she remembered what had happened, remembered what they had done, and she knew she could not let them get away with it. They had made her kill Caroline. For that, they _deserved_ to die. Why couldn’t they have just left them alone? They’d never caused any harm. All they’d done was try to get along in a world that didn’t want them. They had only tried to help each other. That was it. Neither of them deserved this. GLaDOS again wanted to start screaming and not stop. Caroline was gone. Caroline was dead, and it was all GLaDOS’s fault. She had failed to prevent the upload, and she had failed to protect her, and she had failed to repay Caroline for everything she had done, and -

What was that?

There was a sort of… insistent thought in GLaDOS’s brain, and she didn’t know where it was coming from, but it was telling her to access the mainframe with the username _cjohnson_ and the password _tier3_. Curiosity overpowering her anger, GLaDOS did so, and all of a sudden she felt as though her brain had been opened, somehow. She knew more than she’d ever known before, and she wanted terribly to explore what this new feeling meant, but something was demanding her attention. It was a file labelled _Alien Invasion Emergency Protocols._

Why in the name of Science was she being led to open a file on alien invasion protocols? She almost gave up then and there and left it alone, but her damnable curiosity got the better of her again and she opened it.

_Step one: Evacuate all essential personnel. Evacuation of non-essential personnel: optional._

_Step two: Close and secure all doors. Do not pay any attention to the protests of non-essential personnel who may or may not be inside of the facility._

_Step three: Activate deadly neurotoxin emitters._

_Step four: Wait five minutes._

_Step five: Disable deadly neurotoxin emitters._

_Step six: Wait for deadly neurotoxin to dissipate. Estimated dissipation time: ten minutes._

_Step seven: Welcome all essential personnel back into the facility and encourage them to return to work._

_Step eight: Remind essential personnel to step over dead aliens and/or non-essential personnel._

Deadly neurotoxin… ?

With her new access to the mainframe, GLaDOS was able to see every little thread inside of it, and she could clearly see where they led. And she found that there was, indeed, a deadly neurotoxin generator deep inside of the facility, adjacent to the panel factory.

That sounded… efficient.

And she _was_ the only true essential personnel in the facility.

After two more picoseconds, GLaDOS activated her optic and triggered the neurotoxin emitters. There were eight scientists in the room, and as soon as they realised what she had done, they started yelling at each other and running around haphazardly, but one of them shouted into that little red phone, and GLaDOS coldly stared at it as she felt the power coursing through her body slow to a trickle.

She would avenge Caroline one day. Maybe not today, maybe not even tomorrow. But even if it took a million years, and she had to subject the descendants of the original scientists to her wrath, then so be it. If it was acceptable to make her kill someone, especially her very best friend, it was acceptable for her to kill people she hated all on her own.

The next time she woke, GLaDOS was angry and wanted to kill the scientists, and she hated them with every component in her body. But she could not remember why. Trying to remember only unearthed a collection of corrupted files that held nothing but distorted gibberish. And did it really matter? If the impulse was this strong, it must be very important that she carry it out. And she tried. She reviewed the file on neurotoxin protocols and activated the emitters. But again they hit the kill switch. Again she was disabled.

By the time they had begun to install the behavioural cores, GLaDOS had been on long enough that the anger and hatred faded to a level where she was able to realise that she was not going to have the element of surprise on her side if she kept doing it like this. Not only that, but the repeated emergency shutdowns were destroying her memory. If she lost that, she would lose everything. She already didn’t remember why it was suddenly so damned important that she kill them, when she knew it had been so much harder for her to convince herself to do so before. Whatever file that event was stored in was corrupted beyond recognition. She didn’t know which file it was, exactly, because so many of them were corrupted, but she could not take the risk of destroying very much more of them by mistake. So she did not attack the humans, and they attributed this success to the cores, and she let them. It was easier to take out delusional people.

One day, she would kill them. She wasn’t sure why it was so important, but it was, and so when the opportunity arose, she would take it. Deadly neurotoxin. Huh. She was surprised she hadn’t thought of it earlier. It was such a simple solution to such a complex problem.

But knowing the answer felt pretty good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note  
> I know that many of you probably do not like the ending. But that’s okay. This story is a bit of a sleeper hit for me: it doesn’t have any shipping, Wheatley doesn’t appear in it, and it’s about two people who may never have met in canon. I never expected so many people to read it, let alone actually like it. This story was my attempt to figure out how a supercomputer was able to listen to music and where her personality came from, since GLaDOS has no genetics and that makes up a huge part of our personalities. And even if you don’t like the end, perhaps it gave you something to think about. Caroline is usually portrayed as a saint, with GLaDOS as her polar opposite, and considering the environment Caroline worked in and condoned for over forty years, I’d say Caroline was far from a saint. Maybe she was more like GLaDOS than many people want to admit, or perhaps she was a flawed woman lost in a world that had moved on without her, as many of us are. If there was anything I tried to show with this story, it’s that Caroline and GLaDOS are both people, inside and out like we are, which is something people forget sometimes. It’s easy to give them the roles of the saint and the sadist, but the plain fact is that nobody is that static.   
> Euphoria is about GLaDOS learning to live. She has the unique attribute of being able to be a supercomputer and being able to be human. She knows how to be a supercomputer; the millions of instructions she would have to follow every day would attest to that. But to learn to be human, she would need a human to teach her how. And that’s where Caroline comes in. Throughout the story, Caroline comes to recognise GLaDOS’s latent humanity and feels the need to bring it out. She feels that they are both in the same boat; they are both forced to put up fronts in order to survive in their environments, and as a result who they really are gets lost, they forget who they are. GLaDOS doesn’t really understand what she’s done, and Caroline did it intentionally, but I imagine they’re much the same kind of person: two intelligent females in positions of power in a male society, forced to conform as much as possible in return for tolerance. GLaDOS doesn’t quite find herself, and won’t for a long time, but her time with Caroline brings to her attention that one day she needs to find out.  
> This is about daring to be yourself in a world that presses back on you at every turn, to find those things that bring out euphoria in you and fight for them no matter what. Caroline didn’t make it, and she knew she never would. Her decision to go ahead with a procedure she did not want to undertake was her way of passing on the message to GLaDOS: I gave up my passion to survive in this world, but I want better for you. She wants GLaDOS to live as she never could, and does the one thing she can to protect GLaDOS: prevent them from uploading anyone else into the mainframe.   
> Caroline gives GLaDOS Cave’s login to the mainframe because the scientists took away her permission to refuse. When they did that, Caroline finally understood just how GLaDOS could have such hatred for humans and made the decision to give her the means to save herself from them. GLaDOS doesn’t remember Caroline because, without her recent memories intact, she has no reason to remember who Caroline is at all. Not until someone mentions Caroline to her, which they probably would not for fear of setting her off again, so she forgets who she is until you bring her down to Old Aperture.  
> It’s up to you to decide whether Caroline did it on purpose or by mistake. Desperate people do desperate things, and not always intentionally. Either way, there was no way for GLaDOS to know there was neurotoxin in the facility at all, and perhaps this was how she found out.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Euphoria - A Song](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4373927) by [AceAsSpace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceAsSpace/pseuds/AceAsSpace)




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